


The Valley, part one

by rosymamacita



Series: The Valley [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Bellarke, Bi!Bellamy, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, High School, M/M, Magic, Witches, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-05-26 07:16:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosymamacita/pseuds/rosymamacita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arkadian Valley has secrets. Underneath the town, riddling the hills, lines of power spill energy into the residents. Strange, unexplainable things happen. Magic flows, but people kill to keep the knowledge of that magic silent.</p><p>Clarke's father died for that secret, and now Clarke knows. She is a virtual prisoner in her own home, forever alone.</p><p>Bellamy also knows secrets. Secrets are life when it comes to being a Blake witch. He and his sister are the only witches he knows, but they are still alive, so they keep the secret. Isolated and alone. </p><p>But magic has a call of its own. And those who belong together may hear the call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blossoming

**Author's Note:**

> Mego42 asked me to do this prompt and it caught me. So here it is. I, of course, had to go off in all sorts of different directions and world build. No drabbles for me. 
> 
> Soulmate au where when you write something on your skin with pen/marker/whatever the hell you want, it will show up on your soul mates skin as well.  
> Imagine having a super artistic soulmate who draws flowers and designs and really beautiful patterns all over their arms and person 2 just sits there and watches the little lines appear on their arms and they can’t stop smiling and it’s their favorite part of the day

Clarke Griffin was alone. She sat in the studio she’d made in her mother’s basement, images of sunsets and far horizons charcoaled on the walls, keeping secrets. Clarke was allowed to go to school and then come home. That was it. Her mother had grounded her, for her own safety, she said. Clarke saw the fear in her eyes. Her mother knew that Clarke knew, and she was terrified what would happen if her headstrong daughter spent too much time with other people. And Clarke knew she saw the rebellion in her eyes. 

“You can’t tell anyone, Clarke,” her mother said, the night they had found out Jake Griffin had died. “They will kill to keep it quiet,” she’d whispered and never spoke of it again. The silence got louder.

Clarke’s father had a secret, and he’d been killed for it. Mayor Jaha had held a ceremony after the “accident” to honor the good work that Jake Griffin had done for the town, as engineer of the new aqueducts, without ever mentioning they ley lines that Jake had uncovered. Ley lines, lines of energy below the hills of Arkadia, filling the town with magic and infusing its residents with powers that caused strange occurrences. No one wanted to speak about those nights when the air thrummed and something broke free. No one wanted to admit those mornings they woke up to death and destruction were something more than just freak accidents, but Jake had known. Abby knew. Clarke and her best friend Wells had found out together, eaves dropping, and because of Wells, his father Thelonious Jaha knew too. And because Jaha knew, Jake Griffin was dead. Her best friend had betrayed her, and in some ways, that hurt the most. She was completely alone.

Everyone laughed off the strangeness of the town of Arkadia, they turned it into a joke, pretending the deaths and feeling of unease was just one of those quirky small town things that happened in the mountains, like Bigfoot or old family feuds that carried on for centuries, or recipes for healing liniments handed down through generations.

It wasn’t tall tales. It wasn’t old wives’ tales or herbal remedies. It was magic and magic was dangerous.

Clarke agreed to the silence and spent all of her after school hours painting and drawing harmless images of the landscape, reading old books she’d found in her dad’s library, and sitting in her window in her room, watching the town below her, nestled in the valley. Her mother looked at her and sighed deeply every night when she kissed her on the forehead, sad, scared, hoping Clarke would listen to her, and never speak of what they knew.

But in the dark of night, after her fathers death, with the branches bare and skeletal against the moonlight sky, Clarke began to fly.

She knew it was because she was lonely. The books she’d found in her dad’s library told of old things, ways to ride the ley lines in spirit, so when you closed your eyes and centered yourself, you could travel out beyond your body. The books said the lines were more than just power conduits, they were ways to connect people who belonged together.

And more than anything, she wanted to connect. It had been a year since her father’s death, and she had never been so alone. Her mother and she were wary around each other, always waiting for the anger and guilt below the surface to break through. Wells had told their secrets and betrayed her, causing her father’s death, so she could never trust him again. She didn’t realize how much she’d feel the loss of her best friend. Nor did she realize how isolated she’d felt when she couldn’t even speak to anyone at school, knowing of the danger of letting the secret out, letting the magic free. Everyone was in danger and she felt eyes watching her constantly.

Clarke listened to her mother’s footsteps fade off down the hallway, the door to her own bedroom close, and she sighed. She wrapped her old quilt around her shoulders and buried herself in the pillows of the window seat that gave her the best view of Arkadian valley. The book was tucked under the seat cushion and she pulled it out and opened it to the place she’d marked.

It was a map of the ley lines running through the valley. It always reminded her of the way veins and arteries were laid out in a body, the way she’d seen in her mother’s anatomy books, connecting the head and the heart and all the important organs and sending life to limbs. Clarke found herself running her fingertips over the visible veins in her arm, thinking about how that vein connected to all the other veins in her body, about how her head and heart were connected because of these snaky, blue lines under the white skin of arm. Clarke let her breath out slowly and remembered the ley line that ran right below her house, and just like that, Clarke’s spirit entered the flow of energy and she was free. 

***

Bellamy Blake knew secrets. 

Secrets were life when you came from a long line of witches. Secrets were whispers passed down from mother to son, from father to daughter. Secrets were never letting anyone outside of the family know what you knew, what you had no reasonable way of knowing, because magic thrummed through your veins and demanded to be listened to. Secrets were trying to figure out what it all meant on your own, when your link to the knowledge, your parents, was pulled away from you by sudden death. Sudden deaths that happened too frequently. His father who died of a factory accident when Bellamy was only four. His sister Octavia’s father who disappeared mysteriously before Octavia could speak, and right after Bellamy had finally come to feel he had a dad again. And then, again, just this year, their mother, who died of a mysterious illness that came on suddenly and had no known cause and no known cure. 

This was what it meant to be a Blake witch. And yet, the Blakes tried to live in the mundane world as if magic didn’t flow through their veins along with their blood. Bellamy’d had to drop out of grad school and return to Arkadia to be Octavia’s guardian, because while Blake witches knew how to take care of themselves, DCS frowned on having a 17 year old living alone in a creaky old house on the edge of town, raising herself. 

Bellamy didn’t even mind, really. He’d always felt like he was faking it slightly, out there in the big city, pretending to be a college guy. He knew how to put on the act, to give the professors what they wanted, to get the grades, to hang with the girls and the guys and laugh with them, to give them the eyes and the lips and the hands that they wanted, the nights that they wanted. He couldn’t lie. He had been having a great time in college and grad school, taking over the city, doing whatever the hell he wanted, but with his mother’s death, the act ended. He came home to Arkadia, because it was all about the blood. 

“Bell!” came his sister’s voice through the window. “Get off of the roof! You’re going to freeze to death out there.”

“Not a chance, O,” he called and lay back on the pitched roof, his hands under his head, the heat of his magic keeping him warm even though the temperatures hovered just above freezing. “Don’t worry about me, I’m just…” his words faltered. These were not things they were allowed to say out loud, even on a quiet night like this when it seemed no one in town was out, like no one could hear. In the silence that followed his aborted sentence, the wind kicked up and whistled through the trees.

His sister came to the window and poked her head out of it. He turned his head to look at her and saw her eyes flash with that particular banked-coals glow, just for a second. They didn’t need to say the words. She knew how he longed for connection. She did, too. They knew they were missing something, something that had been torn away from them by secrets, and they didn’t know how get it back.

“Fine,” Octavia said, her eyes going back to their normal bright green. “Sign this, please. Apparently I need permission from my guardian to take part in this art show, because it’s for some official charity and there’s going to be media or whatever and I’m underage. Just sign it. I want my sculpture in the show.”

Bellamy sighed and rolled over so he could reach the form, taking it and the pen from her hands and using the shingles to support the paper while he signed all the checked spots. It made him laugh that the rough shingle gave his signature a distinctly kindergarten-like scrawl. He didn’t really care. He knew they didn’t either. He handed the form back to Octavia and they both rolled their eyes, saying without needing to say it, ‘stupid mundanes.’ He kept the pen, twirling it between his fingers, meditatively, making it dance, almost like it was drawing in mid air.

Octavia looked at the pen, then up at him, knowingly. “Okay, then. I’ll leave you to it. Don’t get into trouble.”

Bellamy snorted. “I make no promises.” He was already feeling the pull of the magic tonight. He knew it wanted him. By the way Octavia shook her head as she watched him, she knew it, too.

“Yeah, well.” There was nothing to say to that. “Can we please keep the window closed? You’re letting out all the heat. It’s freaking January, Bell, and I don’t feel like having to… just think about the gas bills, okay?”

“Fine,” he said, but he’d already rolled onto his back again, not even feeling the cold, even though he was only wearing a t shirt. He was vaguely aware of Octavia huffing a frustrated sigh and closing the window, but it meant nothing. 

“It’s all about the blood,” he muttered, as he drew on the skin of his arm with the blue ball point pen, tracing the veins, imagining the power in them, the blood, the way it spoke to him, called to him in a language he understood without knowing how. 

And then he was gone, a part of the night, a part of the web of energy connecting them all to the magic. His heart flew free.

***

-It’s all about the blood. 

The valley was brilliant. It glowed in the night. They flew above it at the same time they were one with it.

-The lines in the earth. The power. Connecting.

They were all a part of the web of energy. Inextricable.

-Connecting us all.

They were not alone.

-Connecting the head and the heart.

Together, they made something new, something that blossomed with the power. The magic.

***

“Together?”

Clarke startled and found herself back in her room. The book clunking to the floor as it fell from her lap.

She tried to catch her breath, but it was hard. She felt like she had been running. Or kissing. She was burning up, she was so hot.

She threw the quilt off and stood up, trying to see the dark valley through the window glass. While she’d been flying, it had seemed to glow with power, but now, to her eyes, it was just dark and sleeping, quiet. Mundane. She pressed her hands up against the window and peered through them. Nothing.

But it hadn’t been nothing.

She hadn’t been alone. Someone else had been out there with her, flying through the valley, riding the ley lines. Someone else out there had this magic. The books had talked about others, but never how one was supposed to find them. 

She had found them. Her breath stuttered. She had KNOWN them. They were a part of her so deeply, she wasn’t sure if she could tell where they had ended and she had begun. They were connected. One.

And yet, she had not one clue who they were. She didn’t even know if they were male or female, young or old. She could pass them on the street and she’d never know who they were. She could already know them, and she would have no idea. 

She felt suddenly bereft. Alone again, but worse this time, because now she knew what she was missing. The night was dead again and silent and she was alone. She pulled back from the window.

Then she saw it.

On her arm. The marks. Right over her veins in blue ballpoint ink. Like the ley lines, or a river, or a branching stem.

As if she had drawn it on her own arm. She remembered the words she’d heard in her head while she flew. “It’s all about the blood,” she’d thought, but she didn’t think they were her thoughts. Just like she didn’t think this drawing on her arm was hers. She didn’t even own any blue ballpoint pens. She always wrote in black, just in case she wanted to draw in the margins of her papers.

She ran her fingers over the drawing on her skin. It smudged, just like it would have if she had done it. But she hadn’t. And that was when she knew. It was them. Whoever she’d found out there in the magic.

Clarke ran over to her desk and picked up a bottle of ink she’d been using to sketch with for art class. Sky blue, for hope. She grabbed a brush and began painting, right over the blue ballpoint ink sketch on her skin. 

***

Bellamy jolted on the roof, his heart beating. 

“What the hell was that?” His hands shook as he threw open the window sash and clambered back in the house. He felt the cold all of a sudden, as if the heat from his magic had been leeched away. He closed the window behind him and locked it. “Who the hell was that?” he said to the empty room and shook his head in confusion.

He made his way down the stairs, shaky. Confused. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge, just needing something to hold onto, something to bring him back to the real world, to center him to his physical senses.

He flopped down on the couch next to Octavia, watching a silly show about teenagers. 

“What’s wrong?” she said, immediately attuned to the energies he was giving off.

He shook his head and took another gulp of beer. “Someone was out there.”

“What?” Octavia sat up and switched off the TV, turning her body to face him. “Are you in danger?”

Bellamy exhaled, heavily. “No.” He said, in awe. He couldn’t explain it. He could barely even wrap his head around it, he just knew it felt right. “No,” he told her, catching her eyes. “They’re mine.”

“What is that supposed to mean? You know no one can find out about us or we’ll end up like our parents.”

He shook his head. “They aren’t a danger to us. I don’t know who they are, but whoever they are, O, they are mine. Mine.” The thought made him gasp. It was something he’d wanted his whole life, someone to belong to, someone who belonged to him. It was too much. He raised the beer shakily too his lips and took a long swallow. The cold and wet centered him. 

“What the fuck?!” Octavia shouted, grabbing his arm and pulling it to her, spilling beer across his lap.

“Goddamn it, O!” he yelled and then stilled.

Octavia held his arm between them and they both watched as, over the ballpoint tracing of his veins, flowers appeared. One at a time, as if someone were standing there painting them, twining them over the veins, the color of the early morning sky. Blossoming on his arm. 

“It’s them,” Bellamy whispered.

“You’ve found another witch, Bell.” 

Their eyes met. They weren’t alone anymore.


	2. Spells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mysterious drawing on their arms has both Clarke and Bellamy frustrated. They know nothing, understand nothing, just that they are connected to each other, even if they haven't the slightest clue who the other is. 
> 
> Magic has its own pull. Magic has its own lessons. Clarke and Bellamy may not be ready for any of it.

Days passed. The blue ink she’d used to draw the flowers on her arm faded away to nothing right away, but the ballpoint veins stayed. She kept running to the bathroom stall to pull up the sleeve of her sweater to check it, not wanting anyone else to see it, feeling it was too intimate for some casual classmate to lay eyes upon it. She watched the ballpoint get lighter and lighter at every bathroom break. She couldn’t take it.

When she got back from school that afternoon, she yanked her sweater off and painted the faded veins like they were a tree, with tiny green leaves. 

She ran her fingers over the leaves and smiled, wondering if whoever it was who’d drawn the veins would see it. Whoever it was she’d flown with. She relived the feeling of belonging until the thought struck her. What if they never saw her flowers at all. What if they didn’t see these green leaves. What if this connection she felt was only one way, or imaginary.

She drew over the ball point veins with her own finger, tracing the exact same lines, thinking, “are you out there?” 

It was real, she knew. It had to be real. The veins were there, and she hadn’t made them. Had she? She bit her lip. The sun was setting early, the winter chill settling across the valley. And Clarke had homework to do. She sighed and turned to her books.

Reading Macbeth did not have half the attraction as the night time did for her, in her head, she was already flying above the town, the glowing lines of energy leading her on, remembering the soul that flew with her. But her body was still there, trying to struggle through the scenes.

SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches  
First Witch  
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.  
Second Witch  
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.  
Third Witch  
Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.

 

She had to read it three times without comprehending a word before she threw the battered paperback, passed down through years of classes, across the room. It landed on the window seat. 

“Forget it,” she said and went over to retrieve it, only to set it aside once more, digging under the cushions for the old book of her father’s.

The writing in it was old. Very old. She’d looked for publishing information, but there was none, just the neat lines of type and the illustrations of ley lines and the physics of energy. To be honest, she didn’t really understand. Sometimes they spoke of the energy as water flowing, or air. Sometimes they spoke of it as fire, and it was always written as tied to the earth.

The sun set as she sat in the window seat, her book in her lap. She knew she shouldn’t try. How could her flight partner even know she wanted to… what was it she wanted to do?

She wanted THEM. There was no other way to say it. This yearning. This pull. It was almost physical. She leaned her head up against the glass and let her fingers follow the inked veins, so much like the ley lines in the book, there under the surface, here under the surface, there, out there. Here.

Out there.

***

This shift sucked. 

Who the hell would come into a bar on a cold and grim Wednesday afternoon in January, when the clouds were so heavy and dark the early night seemed to come even earlier. 

No one but a hardcore barfly, that’s who. He sighed and shook his head at his own impatience. He was lucky to get a job at this bar in the first place, and he knew it. It was a good gig and he had to pay his dues as bouncer 4 nights a week, just to get two shifts tending bar, even if it was afternoon dead time. 

He cast his eyes down to the girl at the end of the bar, messing with her phone. She’d told him she was meeting a friend after work, but had gotten out early. She was almost done with her drink, plain old vodka cranberry.

He eyed her. Pretty thing. Tall and slender with long brown hair waving down her back. He could make her a drink that was better than a vodka cran. It was almost the end of his shift. He looked at the girl and started to get ideas.

He checked the door, nonsensically, to see if Octavia had come in. She knew she wasn’t supposed to hang out in the bar because she was underaged, and besides, she was hanging out with her friends, Monty and Jasper, at their house. He checked the back of the bar, just to make sure, because she would KILL him if she knew what he was about to do.

He took down a rocks glass and started singing under his breath, a hum of words, barely understandable, barely English, to be honest, words his mom used to sing when she was making her potions. She called them rune songs. He felt the energies rise, through ground, into him. He nodded. He picked up the bottle of campari, and swirled it three times, with the rhythm of the song. He wanted red. Red was important for what he was planning. He opened up a can of pear juice. He didn’t know why. It was the sweetness, the lusciousness, the sensuality. He licked his finger and before he could convince himself to be wise, he dipped his finger in the pear juice, one, two, three times. He was starting to feel dizzy with the heady feel of magic, the smell of the pear as he poured the juice into the glass, the feelings of heat zinging down his spine. He shouldn’t.

He reached for the tequila. And it was the bad kind of tequila. This was the kind that made you regret your decision. The kind that made you do those things things you’d always wanted to do but shouldn’t. He shot a glance at the pretty brunette and caught her looking. She blushed and looked back at her phone. Bellamy smirked. Just what she already wanted to do, but thought she shouldn’t. The magic was working before he even gave her the drink. 

He dropped the ice in the glass. One. Two. Three clinks, and cut a strawberry in half to slide onto the edge of the glass, like a pair of flushed lips. His song wound to a close and he picked up, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye to see that, yes, she was still watching him.

He smiled and walked over to her, feeling her eyes travel up and down his body. He felt like he was buzzing, a cross between magic and arousal. The only thing keeping him in his body was her eyes on him.

“I made you something,” he said, and his voice was husky, like he hadn’t used it in a while.

“I didn’t order anything,” she said. “What is it?”

He grinned, and she grinned back. “Magic,” he said. “I’m Bellamy. What’s your name?”

“Echo,” she said, with one eyebrow cocked.

“Are your friends late?” She watched his lips move as he talked. He couldn’t keep the smirk off his face. He didn’t even need the spell.

“A little,” she said. Her voice was husky too.

“Well, then, I’ll keep you company,” he said, and slid the drink across the bar, closer to her.

She watched his hand and then reached for it. Taking it in her own and turning it over.

She was forward. He definitely hadn’t needed the spell. 

“What’s this?” she asked, pulling up his sleeve to look at his arm.

The flowers had faded, but he couldn’t bear to wash off the lines he’d drawn over his veins. He didn’t know why, he just couldn’t. Because they were THEIRS and he’d been hoping for…something.

“You must be an artist, Bellamy.”

He looked down now at what she was looking at. The veins had been painted over with green leaves. Bright. Light. Spring colored leaves.

A laugh bubbled up inside him. It filled his head. He was laughing. “No. I’m not an artist.”

She turned his arm over. The leaves continued around the back, making his whole arm into a kind of forest, or something. A place where little children got lost, left breadcrumbs, found witches. They were an artist.

Bellamy shook his head and grabbed the spell, taking it away.

“Don’t drink this,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’m using you to experiment on. Everyone tells me to stop making up new boutique cocktails,” he lied, “they all taste terrible. I’ll get you another vodka cran.”

He saw the look of disappointment on her face, but he’d been fooling himself. That spell had never been for her. It had been for him, because he could think of nothing but THEM, whoever they were, the feeling of belonging, and he’d been trying to distract himself with the pretty girl and he just couldn’t.

The bell above the door jingled and he looked up. Nyko, the night bartender, walked in. Bellamy’s shift was over. He poured some Absolut in a glass and splashed it with cranberry juice, garnishing with a lime wedge. 

He put it in front of Echo along with her tab. “This is on me, but if you could close out, it’s the end of my shift and I kind of have to…”

“Uh, sure,” she said, reaching for her purse, confused.

He couldn’t find it in him to feel guilty for his abrupt about-face. They both knew what he had started. And he had ended it. He rubbed his arm over the new painted tree and cleaned up his station, just waiting for Nyko to take over. Echo dropped a twenty on the bar and he reached for it.

“Keep it,” she smiled, looking up at him through her eyelashes. She still wanted him. 

“Thanks, Echo,” he said and gave her as sincere a smile as he could while his thoughts were flying away over the town. But he was already gone.

Nyko took over and Bellamy pulled on his woolen coat, not really warm enough for the blustery wind. He tucked his hands into his pockets and pulled his hat over his ears. The sound of his footsteps was steady, like a metronome, it set up a song in his head, with those almost English words that his mother used to sing.

That’s the thing with magic. In the fairy tales, they always gave you the impression that magic was something the witches had complete control over but the truth was, magic was the thing that could take you. Like the ocean or a blizzard, like the night falling, it came upon you and you were lost.

He knew he was still walking home, but the magic wanted him. Octavia was better at channelling it sometimes. Maybe it was her temper, she was always yelling at someone or something, letting all that energy out, pointing it at someone before it built up and got dangerous, but Bellamy? He had to keep it together. His mother always warned him about that, told him he had to learn to ground better, but then she was the one who let it take her, and drain her dry, just like any other addict. So if he wanted to resist, then who was she to tell him otherwise?

He turned the corner on his street and a strong gust of wind surprised him. He reached out to brace himself on a picket fence and the wooden fence exploded into shards in his hand.

“Shit!” Nothing but sawdust. Bellamy pulled his hand back into his chest. Careful not to touch anything. “Fuck.” He should never have messed with that seduction spell, no charms or sigils to keep it contained. He’d gotten cocky. He’d been so good so long. And he wanted to be bad.

He chased the rune song out of his head, singing the Violent Femmes out loud instead, trying to chase the magic away. 

Broken down kitchen at the top of the stairs  
Can I mix in with your affairs?  
Share a smoke, make a joke  
Grasp and reach for a leg of hope

Words to memorize, words hypnotize  
Words make my mouth exercise  
Words all failed the magic prize  
Nothing I can say when I'm in your thighs

Fuck no. That was no good. He cut the song off. It was just as much a spell as the drink had been. The energies coalesced around him, in him. He roared into the wind to let it out. It didn’t work.

It was because he wanted something. Them. He wanted them, and it was nonsense. He didn’t know them. He didn’t even know if they were male or female. They could be a kid or an old guy. He had no idea but it didn’t matter. Everything about him, body and soul yearned towards them.

He finally reached home and got himself inside, ripping off his jacket and sweater and dropping them on the floor before collapsing on the sofa, his fingers tracing the delicate green leaves desperately. He wanted to slip into the energy and find them in spirit form, but the memories of his mother dying, lying in bed, a husk of herself because she had let too much go to the magic… he couldn’t.

It calmed him to run his fingers over the tree painted on his arm. The blue ink he’d drawn there was almost gone, he noticed. He could fix that. He reached over and grabbed a black bic pen from the cup on the side table. There were pens all around the house. They never knew when they were going to need to draw a sigil or a rune, and he needed to right now.

First he redrew the trunk of the tree, making it look less like veins and more like an actual tree. Well, not really, he wasn’t an artist, although they probably were. But it was the intention that mattered here. And what he was going to do with that intention. 

Into the roots of the tree, he drew an ancient rune for grounding. A rune that connected him to the earth, both allowing him access to the energies and releasing what he couldn’t hold inside of him. He felt the explosive energy inside of him drain into the earth. 

He released a breath he realized he’d been holding too long. He was still shaking in reaction, but he no longer felt like he was going to fly apart, and all his pieces sucked out into the sea.

His fingers, though, kept drawing sigils in the limbs of the tree, like lanterns, symbols of all he wished for them. He put his good intentions in. Happiness. Success. Restful sleep. Laughter. Friends. Family. Dreams. Love. He put all the things he knew to be good, the things he wanted himself. He ran his fingers each of the runes, hoping that they saw it. Hoping that they knew what it meant.

The magic was strong tonight. He was certain the runes would be realized. He gave runes to them, for them. 

If only he could fly with them tonight. But he didn’t dare. Not when he was so close to the edge and the power pulled so hard. Instead, he grabbed a vial of scented oil and went to take a shower. Let the water and the oils wash this night away. He would not succumb.

***

-This is a dream.

-Yes. A dream.

-But you’re here.

-I’m here.

-Why didn’t you come to me? I called. I painted the tree.

-The magic wanted me. It wasn’t safe. I sent you runes. To keep us safe.

-Why do you sound like me?

-We are us.

-Is this real?

-Yes.

-I turn to look at you and all I see is me.

-We are us.

-What are we?

-Witch.

***

She woke up panting. The blankets tangled around her legs, sweating again. She threw off the covers and ran to the window seat, digging the book out.

Witch, they’d said. Witch.

Was she a witch? Had the book mentioned witches? She was sure it hadn’t. It seemed like science, to her. Formulas and laws of physics. She thought about those ley lines beneath the ground. Energy. Magic. She thought about the strange things that happened in town. It was an old book. As far as she could tell, it was written around the time the town had been founded, three hundred years ago. It wasn’t like she hadn’t noticed all the major streets and landmarks ran along the ley lines. 

What if this book was someone trying to explain the unexplainable? She wanted to understand.

She asked for answers and she got nothing but questions.

And she still didn’t know who they were.


	3. This Isn't A Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's magic is just waking up, and she's so curious, yearning towards it, towards THEM, that soul who has been calling her.
> 
> But Bellamy's magic has a stronger hold on him and it wants him. It wants to take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't a wholesome High School story, although Clarke is still in school. She's of age, though. 
> 
> This got a lot darker than I intended, although I always had the dangerous magic, so maybe I was going in that direction after all. It's almost like a drug. 
> 
> Because some of Bellamy's magic manifests in a sexual nature, I'm afraid we've gone into a bit of a dubious consent area. I'm not totally comfortable with that, and that's why I sat on this chapter for a quite a bit. This Bellamy is also bi. I may not have made that explicit earlier, but I always intended him to be so. It's explicit now. He's not doing something he wouldn't otherwise do, but it is like he's drugged. 
> 
> I'm going to have to change my ratings and warnings and labels. I wouldn't consider this smut, but it's definitely more explicit than most of my stuff. Watch out for the ratings changes.

“Mom,” Clarke asked at dinner the next day, “you met dad in college, right?”

Abby nodded, looking down at her plate. They didn’t talk much about him.

“Did you know much about where he came from when you met him? I mean, did you talk about it?”

Abby looked up at her, confused. “What do you mean? He came from Arkadia. The same place you’re from. It’s not a mystery.”

“Yeah, I know, but like, his people. Where they came from.”

“His ‘people?’ Clarke, what are you going on about?”

“You know, his ancestors… my ancestors. Didn’t they help found the town?

“Yes. You know that. They also owned the railroad for at time.”

“They owned a railroad? I didn’t know a person could own a railroad.”

“Yes, well, they did. But, I don’t know, it burned down or something. One of those strange things,” she said and paused, because that’s what you did in Arkadia when strange things happened, as they always did. But then after your pause and the understanding nod, you moved on. “But they were never able to rebuild because someone had embezzled all their money and started another railroad in another town or something. I’m not sure. It’s quite a story, like something out of an old black and white movie with mustache twirling and damsels in distress and everything. There are some dusty old books in your father’s study that go on about it, but it’s basically just a list of everybody who did the family wrong or something and everyone is dead by now anyway. I tried to clean out his library when we first had you, but he said it was history, a legacy, and made me swore I’d never get rid of them. I pretty much forgot about them.”

Clarke stared at her mother. That was the most she’d heard her speak since before her father died. Abby looked up and saw her staring. She waved a hand.

“It was just one of those crazy family stories. Like a legend. This region has so many of those family feud stories. Anyway, your ancestor died somehow and the widow never pursued anything. Her son grew up to be a scientist, I think. It was always a very scientific minded family anyway, as I’m sure you know already. From then on, everyone was a scientist or a professor or something academic.” Her mother stopped and looked at her. “Why did you want to know?”

Clarke shook her head. “I don’t know. I was just curious. Sometimes I wish I knew more, you know?” It was true, but what she really wanted to know was about that book, about the ley lines. About magic. About what it meant to be witch. There were more books. She was going to have to find them.

“I guess maybe you would find those books more interesting than I did.” She said, and then cocked her head, “I wish your dad could be here to show them to you and make sense of them.” Abby’s eyes welled up with tears.

Clarke jumped on an idea, to change the subject. She didn’t want to go back to sad. “My eighteenths birthday’s coming up. I want something for my birthday.” 

Abby looked at her suspiciously. “Your car is fine. You don’t need a new car.”

Clarke rolled her eyes. “No. I want to join the art club.” She didn’t realize until now how much she wanted to.

“What? That doesn’t sound like a good idea. I can’t have you out there mixing with people. I can’t have anyone watching…” Abby put her fork down and it clinked loudly on the plate.

“It’s just a school club, mom. Just sitting in the art room painting and drawing, okay? It’s my last chance before I go off and start studying pre med next year in college. Right? I’ll be gone where no one will care if I know about ley lines or—

“Shhh!” Abby said and her eyes were frightened.

Clarke narrowed her eyes at her mother. She didn’t even know what the ley lines were. She was just afraid of Jaha’s influence. Even in their own home, Abby was afraid. Clarke realized that she was running her fingers up and down her arm, laying in her lap under the table.

Without looking, Clarke knew when her fingertips grazed one of the rune’s they’d drawn. It felt different. It didn’t feel different but she could tell the little squiggle marks from just paint. They had an energy. They drew energy. She could feel it, coming through the ground, into her, connecting to her finger on each rune. She drew a line between the runes. And at each pass she’d say a word in her head. ‘Happiness.’ ‘Dreams.’ ‘Family.’ ‘Success.’ She repeated the pattern.

She watched her mother’s forehead smooth and the anxiety ebb away. Clarke drew another pattern connecting the runes on her arm. Repeating the words silently. ‘Happiness. Dreams. Family. Success.’

“An art hobby would be good for my med school applications, don’t you think, I mean eventually. Besides it’s just painting. A few still lifes. Some flowers. What harm could it do? Hmm?”

“I suppose…” Abby said. “It’s just art club. You deserve to have some happiness, goodness knows everything’s been…” Abby’s words dropped off. 

“You’ve got to sign something. There’s an art show at the end for charity. That’s got to look good for us, right?”

“Of course,” Abby said.

***

That night, Clarke sat in her window seat, looking at the dark clouds scuttle across the moon like memories. She wasn’t sure how she got her mom to agree without arguing, but she touched the runes on her arm and smiled. 

Happiness. Laughter. Friends. Dreams. Love. 

She drew a pattern on her arm, following the runes. The thoughts came to her mind. The thought came to her mind that they had drawn the runes for her. A message. A gift.

Happiness. Laughter. Friends. Dreams. Love.

It was a pattern. Her fingers ran the pattern, in lines, like the ley lines below the ground. 

Happiness. Laughter. Friends. Dreams. Love.

Suddenly she was no longer in her room, but was instead flying above the town, the dark clouds nothing but shadow. The moonlight a grayed glow. The real light was the pattern of ley lines below her, shining through the night.

She could read the pattern. It was the same.

Happiness. Laughter. Friends. Dream. Love.

-You called me

-You came.

-I was eating.

-You…you eat?

The feeling of laughter reverberated through her being. She didn’t have a body. She didn’t have ears to hear it, but she felt the laughter as if it were her own. She felt filled with light, like bubbles, like champagne. Always her favorite on holidays and special occasions when her mother let her have it.

-Of course I eat. I’m a person.

-Who are you? And don’t say witch.

The laughter came again.

-I like you.

She felt loved. She felt safe. She felt home.

-Why won’t you tell me who you are.

-I don’t know. Who are you?

-What kind of question is that?

-Ahh, you won’t tell me who you are either. Why?

-Because we’re the same. 

The words were hers but she didn’t understand them. But she did. The dissonance between understanding so completely and being so utterly, utterly confused jolted her awake.

***

“Bell?” Octavia was saying. She leaned over him where he was slumped on the couch, her face right up in his. “Bell?” 

“What the hell, O? Back off. Give me some room.” He shoved her off, grabbing his sweatshirt that he’d just removed and stuffing his arms into the sleeves. 

“We were sitting here eating pizza and watching tv and then you were gone. Just, like gone.”

He blinked at her. It was weird. He had been so totally elsewhere and now he was back. He felt like he hadn’t been here for ages but also, like no time had passed at all. Like he had slotted out of reality for a second. Or for eternity. “They called me.”

O widened her eyes. “They did? And you went? Just like that?”

His brows drew together. “I did, didn’t I?” He drew a pattern on his arm, over his sleeve.

“What are you doing?” She asked suspiciously, grabbing his hand and shoving his sweatshirt up. She stared at the drawings that covered his whole forearm. “They did this,” she said, then looked up at him. “But you did those runes. Those are your runes. I know them. You gave them a spell to summon you.”

“Summon?” He pulled his arm back and covered it again. “What do you think I am, a demon?” He laughed.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing. Beings aren’t evil, actions are evil. But you gave them power over you. That’s what happened. You went to them, didn’t you? Just left your body.”

He looked at her. “Couldn’t be.”

Octavia snorted. “You want them so much, that you are giving them the key to your soul.”

“Octavia,” he warned.

“Mom never would have let you do this.”

“How do you know, O? You were just a kid when she died and she was already long gone. I’m the one who was taking on all the adult responsibilities, the house and the magic and you. You just got to be the kid. I’m the one who had to protect us from the power and mundanes and the pull. I’m the one who taught you who to control it. You think you have all the answers?”

He was angry. She looked at him, her jaw fallen open in shock. He didn’t care. He stuffed his feet into his boots and shrugged on his coat, and left. 

The sky was dark, and the clouds skated across the moon. He was walking down the street with his eyes open but he felt like they were closed, he felt as if he were floating down into sleep, warm and heavy. He knew it didn’t make sense, but none of it mattered.

The night was cold and it should have been harder to see than it was, but everything seemed to glow with an internal light. It didn’t seem quite real. He didn’t feel quite real. He realized that he had left without finishing dinner. It was a mistake. He knew that the magic needed to be fed in the physical world too. The body had demands. 

He felt like his skin was itching all over. Like he didn’t fit inside of it anymore. Like he belonged elsewhere, flying through the ether or floating through the lines. The ley lines. 

Shit. He was charged. They had called him and he had ridden the ley lines with them and spoken with them and now he was holding all of that energy inside of him. He didn’t know if he was in his body or floating outside of it, or dreaming. He needed to connect to something.

He passed a club, the bass pounding onto the street when the door opened, and it was as if he was drawn inside. He needed the beat, the press of human bodies, something real. 

He was dancing. They were dancing. Heat and muscle pressed up against his back, the music loud and imperative. He smiled at the guy who danced up to him. Tall and green eyed. Pale skin and a toothy smile. Strong and bold.

They felt the music and it went through them. Connecting. Like a heart beat. Like a chant. He could hear it underneath his ear bones. The drone of the music. There were words he didn’t know. He knew, but made no sense. And underneath the pulse as energy flowed below, through, into him.

He handed Bellamy a glass, and Bellamy tossed it back. It was cold and wet and strong and he knew his body wanted it but his body was dissolving into the music trance and the strong arms around his neck pulling him close into a kiss. He felt the wet heat of a tongue in his mouth and a hand leading him somewhere dark, somewhere quiet. 

It was like a dream, pushed up against a wall, hot mouth stroking down his neck, hands undoing his pants, the broad back under his hands, hair tangling in his fingers. “Yes,” he said. “God, yes,” he echoed in a voice that wasn’t his own. He felt his feet stretch into cool sheets as his hands ran up his sides to his breasts. The feelings washing over him. The lips enveloping him, sucking, licking. His fingers stroking his slick heat, pressing inside, sensations electrifying her whole body.

-This is a dream.

He felt the groan rip from his throat, unable to be silent with the onslaught of double sensations.

“This isn’t a dream.” He could still feel her hands on her body, his body, twisting in the sheets of her bed, as the guy he he’d just met sucked him off in the back bathroom of the club, and she stroked herself. “Don’t stop,” he said. His head fell back against the wall and it was all he could do to keep standing as his own orgasm and hers hit him. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, I’m drowning. This isn’t a dream.”

The dude stood back up, he felt him as his broad chest leaned into his, kissing him. He kissed back, hungry, so hungry, his eyes shut, wrapping a hand around his neck and pulling him close. He was blind with it all. He didn’t want it to stop. The guy took his hand and he felt the numbers being written into his palm. “Call me,” he whispered huskily into Bellamy’s ear. “I’ll be your dream come true.”

Bellamy didn’t know when the guy left, he didn’t care, but he couldn’t move. He fastened his pants but his legs collapsed under him and he sat on the floor. Her hands were still touching herself. He was lost in the sensations. 

“Don’t stop,” he said, barely able to breath. “This isn’t a dream.”

-You’re a man

He heard her words in his head. He felt her shock as she realized it wasn’t a dream. And like that she was gone, like a bubble popping, and he was collapsed on the cold floor of a dingy bathroom, shivering as the magic left him.

“Fuck,” he said. Blinking at the bare lightbulb. “Well, fuck.” 

The magic wanted him. Those runes were more than just a spell to let her summon him. They let the magic take him too. He laughed bitterly. He found out the other witch was a woman, one step closer to knowing her, he felt…that… her touching herself, as if it was his own body, because it was. The magic a link between them, making them one, making him want it more, making him want to drown in her, give it all to her, let the magic consume him. He wanted it, he craved it. Ached for it.

He levered himself up off the floor and pulled off his jacket, letting it drop to the floor. Ripping off his shirt and letting that fall too. He turned on the faucet of the sink and pumped the soap into his hand and then he went to work on the runes, scrubbing until they were gone. He scrubbed the runes and the tree, and the dude’s number off of his skin, trying to scrub away the magic, to keep it from taking him the way it had taken his mother until she was nothing left but an empty husk, addicted to the flow, the call, the power that was inside of them.

But the magic wouldn’t go. The green leaves, the forest wrapped around his forearm wouldn’t wash off. It wasn’t his magic, it was hers.

Her. He still didn’t know who she was, her name or her face, but he knew what her nipples felt like pebbled under his fingers. He knew the shape of her sex, the knew the taste of desire in her throat and the song of her arousal in his own head. He wanted her for real. 

But he was afraid she would swallow him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plus side to sitting on this chapter so long is that I have another chapter almost ready to go. whee.


	4. Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pull of magic gets stronger.
> 
> Bellamy tries to keep himself away from it, and so doing, keeps himself away from Clarke. 
> 
> Magic has its ways.

Clarke felt like she was floating through her entire day, not quite present, and even some of her teachers had mentioned it. But she was otherwise such a stellar student that she said she was feeling a little sick, and they just let it go, let her alone to sit in class and imagine the hands and lips running over his body.

When she raised her hand to ask to go to the bathroom, her teacher let her go without question. She splashed water on her face, trying to bring herself back to the here and now, staring at her own reflection, her blonde hair, falling out of its braid, her bright blue eyes seeming brighter against the red rims of her eyelids. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night. Trying to contact him, to get back to him after she’d fallen out of touch with him in shock. 

He was a him. He was a man. Not that it really mattered to her which sex he was, but it just mattered to her that he was him. She couldn’t imagine him being anyone else, now that she knew. He felt right. But she couldn’t get the feeling that he had rejected her when they had shared… that.

She pulled up the overly long sleeve of her dad’s sweater, and ran her fingers over the pale, fading green of the leaves she had painted. That was all that was left. He had washed off his runes. She ran her fingers over where they used to be, but the feelings of power, and rightness that she’d had before when she touched them, they were gone with the ink.

She bit her lip and tried to fight back the tears. She was being silly, wasn’t she? She didn’t know him. Finding out that he was male didn’t mean she knew him any better, did it? But she couldn’t get over the feeling that they belonged together and that he had run away from her.

She looked at her face in the mirror again and the tears welling in her eyes. Spilling over. Dammit. No. She didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t cried since her dad died and she didn’t intend to start now over some imaginary person. 

Imaginary. Dammit. She turned on the water and washed off the last of the green ink from her skin. It came off easily. She’d been keeping it out of the water when she showered and it was still a struggle to keep it from disappearing. Now she washed it away in anger.

“You think you can erase me, guy? Screw you.”

She wiped her eyes clear and pulled her sweater down and went back to class, anger replacing her feelings of abandonment. She made it all the way through class with snarls and snappish answers keeping everyone at a distance. She supposed it wasn’t that different than it had been after her father died. Everybody had pretty much learned to keep her at a safe distance since then. The only one who ever would have tried to break through her pissy attitude was Wells, and he stared at her from across campus, since they no longer shared any classes and she had made it clear that they were no longer friends. 

Clarke should have been excited for her first art club meeting. It was really the first time since her father had died that she’d gotten to socialize or do something outside of class. I mean, technically she was still in school, but at least there was freedom to talk to people and hang out. So she should be psyched, but instead, all she wanted to do was run home and up to her room and lock the door and try to get back the way it felt to feel him, to be inside of him. To be him and be touched.

It made her even angrier. How could he take this away from her. She ran her fingers over her bare arm, longing for the runes. Happiness, dreams, love, she thought. But they were just thoughts. Empty ones.

She flung the paint from her paintbrush at her easel.

“Hey, there, Blondie, watch it!” 

Clarke has splattered the girl to her right with blue paint.

“Oh my god,” Clarke said. “I’m so sorry.”

The girl turned to her and took off her headphones. Her dark hair was tied up in a sloppy bun on top of her head and she wore only a tank top and jeans under her apron, despite the winter chill.

The girl shrugged and wiped the blue paint down her arm, smudging it. “Eh,” she shrugged. “It’s no big. You into abstract expressionism?” she asked, and nodded at Clarke’s painting, which, to be honest, was just angry slashes of paint.

“No. I’m just mad.”

The girl looked at her suspiciously. “Boyfriend troubles? You’ve got that look about you. Or girlfriend?”

Clarke was about to snort and object. She hadn’t had a boyfriend or girlfriend since her father died and she got angry and quiet. None of them really felt as important anymore. Boys or girls. Except now one of them did. She bit her lip to keep back the stupid tears that welled in her eyes.

Oh she was so angry. She nodded. “Boyfriend,” she whispered. Remembering. 

The girl nodded. “Boys are stupid. Art is forever,” she grinned, then reached in to her back pack and pulled out a bottle of root beer, handing it to Clarke. 

Clarke looked at her surprised. “Does Mrs Arbor allow us to have snacks in the class? I don’t want to mess up my first day in the club.”

The girl smiled. “Indra doesn’t care as long as we clean up after ourselves,” she said. “My name is Octavia.”

“I’m Clarke.”

“You’re a senior, right? I remember when your dad—“ Octavia stopped talking and grimaced. 

Clarke stared at her.

“Well damn. My brother always says I have a big mouth. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought your dad up. I don’t even know you, it’s just…”

Clarke blinked away the stupid tears. How were there so many tears today?

Octavia stepped up and leaned in close. “I’m sorry Clarke, I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just that your dad died right after my mom died. I—I’ve been paying attention. I always wanted to… I don’t know, just tell you I understood.”

Clarke gaped at her. 

Octavia shook her head sheepishly and took the root beer out of Clarke’s hand. Opening it up and handing it back. “Drink. Breathe.” Octavia put one hand on her shoulder.

Clarke drank. The sugar was good. The flavor was sweet and earthy and grounded her. She felt the anger pour right out of her, along with the sadness. 

“Better?” Octavia asked. “If you want to throw some more paint on me, I actually deserve it now. I have no social skills.”

Clarke laughed. Octavia smiled back at her. “Better. Thanks. I guess I was holding in a lot. I needed to get it out.”

“Good! Well don’t let me stop you, just try to aim the spatter over at Jasper.”

The gangly boy on the other side of Clarke said, “Hey!” and then stuck his tongue out at her, before going back to his painting which looked more like graffiti than something she’d expect in school.

“Nice,” Clarke said, and nodded at his graffiti. He grinned wide and looked so proud of himself. 

“See? Now you can splatter him with paint and he won’t even mind.” Octavia grinned at her.

Clarke smiled and returned back to her painting. She didn’t feel the need to fling paint on it anymore. In the strong slashes, she allowed a little lightness. Like bubbles rising up through the anger. 

***

She learned how to laugh again. It was like remembering. First she’d listen to the jokes that Octavia and Jasper and their other friend Monty would make, and then she’d laugh along with them, although she didn’t understand “funny” anymore. But then what happened was the laughing seemed to conjure the funny, and all of a sudden she understood again. 

Art soon came to be her favorite time of day. She didn’t just show up in the art studio on Mondays for the scheduled art club, she was there daily, still slightly afraid of Mrs Arbor—Indra— her cool demeanor and her absolutely terrifying insistence that they were warriors of art and should never let fear stop them from expressing themselves, along with her death glare whenever Clarke failed to wash out her brushes properly and put the supplies back in place. 

Octavia took her under her wing. It was silly, she knew. She was younger than Clarke, but it’s like there was some fierce energy under her skin that warmed her and everyone around her. If there came a day every now and again where Clarke didn’t go to Indra’s studio after school and instead went home with Octavia to hang out and play video games, Clarke didn’t really see that there was anything wrong with fibbing to her mother. She would have hung out with Octavia in school anyway. How was it any different?

Instead, she would distract her mother, showing her the sketchbook of perfectly harmless florals and landscapes that she’d been working on in the art club. Instead, she would bring up again how she had been accepted into every college she had applied to and how excited she was to be able to freely choose. Instead, she would show her yet another A she’d gotten on a paper. 

It was easy to distract her mother from the fact that Clarke was happy again, had friends, had hope, and wasn’t hiding away. She didn’t particularly like to wonder why it was so easy to distract her mom from her usual paranoia. Nor did she like the way her fingers constantly returned to her bare arm, running over nothing but blank skin, as if the memory was magic.

She didn’t need him anymore. She had friends. She had laughter. She was actually sleeping well for the first time since her dad died. Even the dreams had stopped. She remained firmly rooted in her own body. 

She was glad that when the sob tore out of her mouth, the door to her room was already closed, and her mother was already watching another Jane Austen movie in her own room. 

It wasn’t true. She did need him. She grabbed a sharpie from her backpack and wrote on her arm, right over her veins, “why did u leave me?” And then she sat there and stared at it horrified. Horrified. How could she expose herself like that? She was so stupid. Her mother warned her that other people were dangerous. She didn’t even know who he was, only that he was male and what it felt to be inside of his skin, panting in pleasure. 

She ran to her bathroom and tried to scrub it off her skin until her arm was raw and red, but still the plaintive question remained.

***

He was sleeping. He knew he was sleeping. Octavia had cranked up the heat for some unknown reason and he was tossing and turning. Sweating. It was not because he had worn himself out with physical activity for the last three weeks. Trying to run away, lift away, climb away from the pulsing energy in his veins. 

No he was too tired to be called by the magic.

He was too tired to be called by those words on his arm. He saw exactly when they appeared, as he was lacing up his running shoes at the gym. And he had covered them with his sleeves and gone around the track as many times as he could, as fast as he could, until he could barely stand. And when he whipped off his shirt he couldn’t help it if his eyes went to the words where he knew she’d written them, only they had been scrubbed away until they were barely legible. She’d tried to erase them.

His stomach twisted at the thought but he just stripped and showered and redressed and went home, feeding himself with the leftover lasagne because the meat and cheese and pasta were what his body craved. His real body. The one in this world that needed to be fed, not the one in that other word, so hungry for energy.

No. He was too tired to be called. His muscle memory had him running in his dreams. He could feel his arms and legs pumping, racing through the night. On his way to where he knew he needed to be.

-Why did you leave me?

-No

-Why did you leave me?

-No. I can’t be here. I can’t be called. It’s too dangerous. It wants me.

-Why did you leave me?

-The magic it wants to take me. It’s too strong. I need some distance.

-Why did you leave me?

-Are you listening to me? It’s the magic it’s…

-Why did you leave me?

The fear thrilled through him. She wasn’t here. He knew she was here. He could feel her energy. She felt like home. He was so happy to be with her.

But she wasn’t there.

-Shit. Shit. Can you hear me?

-Why did you leave me?

-No. No. Stop. You’re letting yourself go. Stop. Hold onto yourself. It’s taking you.

-Why did you leave me?

He had never felt so frustrated that he couldn’t see her, feel her body. That he couldn’t grab onto her shoulders and shake her awake. That he didn’t know who she was and couldn’t run to her door and break it down and wake her up from this dream that was unspooling her bit by bit. He could almost feel her unraveling like an old sweater.

-The hell. I won’t let it happen. 

-Why…

He reached out his energy desperately. He had no arms. She had no body. He couldn’t hold onto her like he wanted, but he reached out with his energy and grabbed onto the threads of her as they pulled her away and reeled them back in, imagining the pattern of her, because it was the pattern of him, knitting her back until he could almost imagine that he had her. Her, real, warm, soft curves in his arms, pressed against his chest. Holding her.

-You’re here.

-I’m here. Don’t do that again. I almost lost you.

-I didn’t know you had me. You left me.

-I was afraid. Of this. But I thought it would happen to me. It wasn’t supposed to be you.

-Where did I go?

-Don’t do that again. The magic was taking you.

It was then that he felt his tears. Felt his muscles shaking. His legs cramping in his bed. He woke up with the feel of her in his arms, fading, fading. 

“Shit!” he said and leapt out of bed, almost collapsing with the cramp in his calf. But he ignored it, grabbing a sharpie from the bedside table and drawing out the sigil for ‘stay’ on his forearm, chanting the half words under his breath as he did. 

He wanted her to not do that again. To stay in her body. Not ever again enter the magic stream and give her spirit away like that. He drew it, clumsily with his left hand, onto his other arm. Then onto his cramping calf with gritted teeth. And the other. Finally he looked down at his shirtless chest and drew it once more over his heart. “Stay” he drew. 

It was a spell he’d developed when his mother first started fading, when he was afraid that he would follow her into the lure of the magic, when he was afraid that living in the real world wouldn’t be enough to keep him here. He should have thought of it when he was first worried about what the magic was doing, but he had to admit it now. He had wanted her to find him, and he was afraid that if he trapped his soul into his body like that, he would trap hers also, and he would never be with her again. 

He realized that he had always been willing, on some level, to risk losing himself. But he couldn’t risk losing her.

He took his pen knife out of the drawer and poked his finger until it bled. He smudged each sigil one after the other, in order, with his blood. It was the blood that sealed the spell. 

They were both locked, now. He thought. With ink and blood, with sigil and soul connection. No more meeting through dreams or aetheric travel. They were done.

It wasn’t worth the risk.

***

Clarke felt like she had been through a marathon when she woke up. She remembered him holding her. She felt so loved in his arms. She could almost imagine him, his hard chest against hers, his arms wrapped around her, keeping her in. He’d said that the magic had almost taken her. But when she woke, she felt more present than she’d ever been. Every muscle was speaking. Every sensation was so strong. They took over until the feel of him was nothing but a memory and then that faded, too.

It made her sad to lose that feeling. She pulled up her sleeve to see her arm, maybe he’d drawn something. And there it was. Heavy and dark, covering almost her whole forearm, hiding her faded words to him. 

She touched it and the magic thrummed in her fingers. Stay. It was a command. She shook her head and knew she had to move forward with her day. Her life demanded it of her. When she was in the shower, she found the other marks. Over her heart. On her other arm. On her legs. 

“I almost lost you,” the thought entered her head, and then faded. 

She felt safe, but alone. She didn’t like it. 

Breakfast. School. Lunch. School. Instead of art club today, She and Octavia got into her car and they drove to Octavia’s house to make brownies. Octavia said she wanted sweetness today, there was too much gloom in the world. So she demanded Clarke come with her and make brownies.

Clarke loved Octavia’s house. It was battered and old and and cluttered with years of books and furniture and paintings that Clarke recognized as Octavia’s. The trim was wood and the walls were all painted a different color and in each room, she felt a different way to be at home. The kitchen was red, and there were images of animals and plants all over the walls, painted platters and patterned plaques, little figurines and jello molds in the shape of lambs. It made her feel like she was alive.

The oven kicked back heat as Clarke shoved up her sleeves to grab the big bowl and pour the batter into the pan. They put the brownies into the oven and then Octavia turned to her, grabbing her arm.

“What’s this?” she asked, pulling the sleeve up so she could see. She covered the mark with her whole hand and then looked at Clarke shrewdly. 

Clarke made a face. “It’s nothing. I just write on my arms sometimes. Stupid.” She tried to pull her arm back but Octavia just reached for the other one. 

“Both arms?”

“Yeah,” Clarke said. “I’m doubly stupid.”

“Stupid is right,” Clarke heard her mutter under her breath.

“It’s just marker,” she grumbled and took her arm back, pulling her sleeve down. “It’ll come off. So what will we do until the brownies are ready?”

Octavia was staring at her and shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe her.

“Nothing. Let’s go watch a movie.”

They were only a few minutes in to their movie when the front door slammed.

“Who the fuck parked in my spot!” came the booming voice.

Clarke looked at Octavia, shocked. This was the brother she was always saying was so great. He sounded awful.

“That is my goddamn parking spot and you know it, O!” He yelled. Clarke could hear his boots shaking the whole house.

Octavia was shaking her head with a tiny smile on her face. She blinked slowly and then looked up, catching Clarke’s eye, then started laughing.

“What is so funny?” Clarke hissed.

Octavia smirked at her. “I just figured out why my brother has been in such a bad mood lately. He misses his girlfriend.”

“I feel sorry for his girlfriend. Maybe she needs some space,” Clarke said, still freaked out by the loud slamming from the vestibule.

“Tell your stoner friends to get their car out of my—“

He stopped in the doorway, shoeless. Wearing worn jeans and a long sleeved henley. He had black hair that curled ridiculously in all directions and Clarke couldn’t stop staring.

“This is Clarke,” Octavia said, amusement rich in her voice. Clarke looked at her. What the hell was so funny about this?

Octavia grinned. She nodded her head at the man gaping at them. “Clarke, this is my brother Bellamy.”

“Jasper has an orange honda, brother Bellamy. I drive a white BMW.” Clarke said, not liking how he just came charging in yelling at her. Even if he didn’t know she was in there. 

Bellamy’s mouth snapped shut. He narrowed his eyes at her and took a step back, crossing his arms over his chest. She tried not to pay attention to the way that made his shirt stretch over the muscles of his shoulders. Tried not to let images enter into her head about what it would be like to be held in those arms. Octavia hadn’t told her how hot her brother was. But why would she?

“Listen, princess,” he said, his voice quieter now, deep and musical, sending a shiver up her spine and making her want to lick a hot stripe up his neck. “Get. Your. Fucking. Car. OUT OF MY SPOT.” He ended his sentence with a furious roar.

“Bellamy!” Octavia said, shocked.

But Clarke saw white. She felt herself vibrating with anger, felt all the sadness and upset and rage she’d been holding back for a year just crescendo inside of her. She stepped right up into his space, with his broad shoulders taking up the room and leaned into him. “Ask nicely,” she whispered into his ear.

He fell back as if she’d hit him, blinking. “What?” he said. 

Clarke gritted her jaw and turned to Octavia. “Thanks for inviting me, Octavia. I’m going to go now.” Clarke was proud that her voice only held a tiny tremor, because she felt like she was shaking like a tree in a hurricane inside of her. 

“Clarke, no. Don’t go.” She came up to Clarke. “My brother is just being an ass. He’s not normally like this. It’s just…”

“Thanks Octavia. Love you. See you in school tomorrow,” Clarke said, on the verge of tears. She had to get out of there before she broke down. She hugged Octavia, looking, briefly over her shoulder at Bellamy Blake, who looked back at her as if he’d been struck. “Bye,” Clarke said, and flat out ran out of there.


	5. Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy has maintained the runes locking him and his soulmate into their bodies for weeks now. He can't risk the way the magic almost took her, even if he was willing to risk it for himself. 
> 
> He still feels her loss. He still looks for her everywhere.
> 
> Clarke feels like her skin is thrumming. She can't get out and fly the ley lines. She can't dream of him. She knows she needs to find some release, but can't.

It was another dumb, slow day at the bar. He’d been promised a weekend shift as soon as someone left, but as of today. It was still dumb slow days full of barflies and a few bouncer shifts. He almost liked those better, when he could intimidate drunk assholes with his bulk and shoot them just a little extra energy, like a rip tide. It was funny how many of them ended up on their asses without him even having to touch them.

But he was careful now. Knowing to keep his body tired. To allow steady releases of the energy so it didn’t overload and make him do stupid things like scrub away the sigils on his arms, or add the marks that would transform them into another summoning charm. He clenched his jaw, thinking about exactly how easy it would be, to turn his imperative “stay” into the imperative “come.”

Fuck.

He grabbed a rag and went to polish the bar again. The bar was already polished. The door opened and he looked up.

Along with a gust of finally spring like air, came in a girl with golden skin and an aura of fiery anger. She sat down at the bar and nodded her chin at him.

“Whiskey,” she called. “Neat. Water back.”

Bellamy nodded, bringing her a glass of water and an empty glass. He set them in front of her and leaned on the bar. “ID, please.”

The girl shot him a look of disgust and took out her wallet, handing him her ID. 

It was an obvious fake. Bellamy snorted.

The girl narrowed her eyes. “Look again,” she said, and he noticed that her brown eyes were actually amber, with flecks of fire in them.

So he looked again. Still fake. He turned it over, marveling at how bad a fake it was when he saw the runes of obfuscation and belief. A witch. “Well shit,” he said. He looked up at her. She stared at him. He knew she was willing him to believe the dumbass bad fake ID. He felt a spark, like fire running up and down his arms. Magic.

A witch.

What if she was his witch?

He saw her watching him, her gaze measuring.

Bellamy had been a witch too long, son of witch. His mother had drilled it into him. There were people who would kill him, who would take what he had. There were people who wanted to suppress the magic. He knew that their secret must stay a secret. That anything more than utter silence was a risk. He wanted to risk it. But he had Octavia, she was still vulnerable.

Bellamy reached back behind the bar and picked up the whiskey bottle, pouring a double shot into her glass.

She grinned and her teeth were white and sharp. She was fierce and she was young. He thought she could be Her. His heart leaped.

“I’ve never seen you around, before,” he said. “I would have noticed.” He smirked at her and she smirked back.

“You definitely would have noticed me, bartender.” She held out her hand. He stopped before taking it, sure that when he did he would feel it, he would know that it was her. He gripped her hand to shake it. 

Just a warm, firm handshake. He was disappointed.

“My name is Raven. I just got into town. It’s my new home. For now.”

“I’m Bellamy. Born and raised here. What in the world would make you stop here?” he asked, bewildered. He’d tried to get away, but was dragged back. 

Raven snorted and looked up at him through her thick eyelashes. Her eyes were still flickering with amber light. He liked it. He leaned forward, resting his arms on the bar.

“Cheating boyfriend and not much to keep me in my old town. I drove out of there and kept driving until something told me to stop.”

“And it told you to stop here?” He let his eyes wander over her face, down her neck to her collar bone, wanting to go farther. To look at the spot over her heart where he wished to see his sigil. He gripped the bar with his hands, fighting the sudden urge to reach out and pull her shirt down to see.

“It did. I always listen to my instinct. And you know what? It’s always right.”

A thrill went through him. Her instinct. That’s what he always told people when his magic told him things. He said it was instinct. He felt his smirk broaden into a smile. 

“I’ve already got an apartment up above that little gift shop with all the candles and bath soaps down the street, and a job, and bar with a hot bartender.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “What job did you get?”

“Mechanic.” 

He stood back and laughed. “Mechanic? You’re awful beautiful to be a mechanic.”

She snorted. “I”m pretty sure that being beautiful doesn’t keep anyone from fixing a broken engine.”

“Fair enough. But you are pretty young to be a mechanic.”

She grinned at him. “Let’s just say it’s a family business. I can put things together. And they stay put.”

“That sounds like a good talent,” he said, and he felt sure she was talking about magic. He wanted to grab her and hold onto her. He’d never met another witch outside of family before, not in the flesh. Not… really.

But the regular down the bar called him for another draft and then someone else walked in. By the end of his shift, though, he’d spent enough time with Raven that when she invited him back to her little apartment above the gift shop, he was ready and willing to go and they tumbled into her bed, barely able to keep their hands off of each other as he pulled her shirt over her head, hoping so much that she would be Her.

“Well, hell. I’ve never gotten that reaction to someone seeing my boobs before.”

His breath left him in a gust. Raven wasn’t her. She was just another witch who wasn’t his witch. His self preservation instincts kicked in. It was dangerous to be exposed. “Sorry. You’re gorgeous.” And she was. He reached for her to kiss her.

“Not so fast, shooter.” She said. “If mine is off. Yours is off.” She yanked his shirt up over her head and then froze herself, staring at the runes inked on his chest. On his arms over his veins.

“Well, shit.” She sat back on the bed. “I should have known.” She looked up at him. “You knew my ID was fake, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “How old are you, actually?”

“Nineteen. Is that a problem?”

She was only a little bit older than his sister, but only a few years younger than him. He looked at her, in just her bra and jeans. He felt a loss that she didn’t wear his marks, but she was also very beautiful, and he felt the need to really be in his body right now. To be physical. To touch every part of her and to be touched in returns. “Not a problem,” he said.

She grinned. “I’ve never been with another witch before.”

He crawled up the bed towards her. “That’s good. It’s dangerous.”

She snorted. “It is not.”

“It’s dangerous for people to know who you are.”

Her eyebrows drew together and she looked at him in doubt. “What kind of town is this?”

“I’ll tell you all about it,” he said, as he unhooked her bra and let his lips taste her.

“Maybe later,” she said.

****

It was night. 

She shouldn’t be out. 

But Octavia had said she wanted her to come with them, so when she called and said the kids were all having a night adventure in the graveyard, there was nothing Clarke wanted more than to climb out of the window and run through the suddenly balmy night to the old cemetery a few streets over.

“Is this what you guys normally, do?” she’d whispered to Octavia, pulling at her arm, when she finally found her, sitting on top of a headstone marked “Jonas Gil.” It was old and the words were nearly worn away.

Octavia had a feral grin and handed her a flask. “Drink,” she said. 

Clarke took a sip and choked. “What the hell is that?”

“Moonshine. Monty and Jasper make it in Jasper’s basement. Isn’t it awesome?”

“It’s terrible, I love it,” Clarke said. “I feel sad that no one has ever invited me to one of these before.”

Jasper slung an arm around Clarke. “Don’t worry, Clarkie,” he said, taking the flask from her and downing a huge gulp. “This is the first time for us too. My cousin, Niylah came home from college on break, and she says midnight hide and seek in the cemetery is all the rage.”

Clarke snorted and took the flask back. “I doubt that.” The moonshine was better the more she had of it. She would remember that. “It’s more likely just an excuse to get drunk and make out behind some headstones.”

Jasper wiggled his eyebrows. “You offering?” Clarke shoved him off and took another swig. A big one. 

She wasn’t offering. Was she? She’d felt keyed up all day. It was probably why she’d agreed to sneak out behind her mother’s back. She was so frustrated that she hadn’t been able to ride the ley lines in so long. Her fingers went to the mark drawn over her heart and traced it. Stay. She hadn’t dreamed of him, either. She hadn’t dreamed of anything.

“Okay, listen up, kiddies,” a tall, slender, brown haired girl said. “Here’s the rules. You run. You hide. Whoever gets stays hidden the longest win.”

There were about a dozen kids there. Octavia and Jasper and Monty, a boy that Octavia liked, named Atom. A few other kids that she’d never gotten all that close to, but was ready to now. She was so tired of being alone. Especially since this mark had been placed on her. She was so lonely. For him. She swallowed hard and grabbed for Octavia’s flask.

“That’s it?” Octavia asked. “That’s just plain old hide and seek. We’ve been playing that forever, Niylah”

“Yes!” Niylah grinned. “But this is at night. In a cemetery. With moonshine. Who knows what could happen?” Clarke caught her eye. Her grinned grew wider.

“True, true.” Octavia said, sneaking a glance at Atom, who was oblivious. “Not it.” There was a chorus of not its until finally it came down to a girl named Monroe who closed her eyes and counted to a hundred. Everyone scattered. She ran into the dark, away from everyone. It felt like she was flying, just for a moment, then her foot landed into a dip in the ground and she fell, flat. Not flying. She lay there for a while as she caught her breath again. Testing her body to make sure she hadn’t damaged anything seriously. Nope. Nothing. Just stupid. And lonely. And drunk.

The moonshine was stronger than she had expected. 

She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the stars, feeling the whole world spin with the booze and the sadness, mourning the loss of her ability to fly free, to meet with him, to separate from her body and to be a part of the energy. She could see the ley lines running beneath the cemetery. It wasn’t a particularly strong energy spot. 

She had kind of wondered if she would see some ghosts, with this new ability of hers. The only odd thing she found in the cemetery was a bunch of delinquents running through the shadows, laughing and drunk, yelling “found you!”

But no. It was was just plain old Clarke, laying in the grass, her hoodie pulled up against the spring chill, feeling her body thrum with desire. It had started before dinner. She had told her mom she wasn’t feeling well, but really she was just feeling keyed up. She wanted to feel him, but somehow, she just couldn’t break through. So she ended up with this itch she couldn’t scratch.

“Found you,” the husky voice said. Clarke looked over at the slender shadow. 

“Niylah,”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Niylah said.

“I’m Clarke.”

“You found yourself a great spot to watch the stars, Clarke.”

Clarke felt herself grin, reaching towards the taller girl. “Join me,”

“That’s not how the game works, Clarke.”

But Niylah was already reclining next to her and when Clarke went to pull her closer, Niylah was there, covering her with her body and kissing her. She tasted like moonshine, and laughter. “I thought that wasn’t how the game worked.”

“No, it’s totally how the game works. I was hoping I’d find you. You’re gorgeous. My cousin has really hot friends.”

“Do you really want to talk about your cousin or…” but then Clarke’s words fell away as Niylah’s hands slipped beneath the waistband of her sweats. 

***

When the rest of group found them, they were lying side by side, looking up at the stars, silently. It turned out they didn’t really have anything to say to each other, and the stars were more interesting. Octavia and Atom found them first, and joined them in their star gazing. One by one or in small groups, the whole hide and seek team ended up in the clearing, on their backs, watching the stars, passing moonshine back and forth until it was gone. 

Niylah took off with Jasper and Monty and the rest of the kids dispersed. Clarke walked silently through the cemetery next to Octavia.

“I’m pretty sure that means I won hide and seek,” Clarke said with a laugh.

“Oh you definitely won hide and seek. So you like Niylah?” Octavia asked.

“She was nice,” Clarke said. She could feel Octavia looking at her. “What?”

“It’s just… you’re crying.”

“No I’m not,” Clarke said, but raised a hand to her cheeks and found them wet with tears. “Oh.”

“Why are you crying?”

Him, she thought. “I don’t know,” she said. 

They walked in silence for a bit more until they reached the gates of the cemetery, climbing over them. After Octavia dropped to her feet beside Clarke, she reached out and grabbed her forearm, right over the rune that had been drawn into her. It sent a shock through her.

“Is it—“ Octavia asked hesitantly, “Is it because of that boy you told me about once? Boyfriend problems? Is that why you went with Niylah tonight?”

Clarke gasped. Octavia was too intuitive by half. She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can really call him my boyfriend. I haven’t… heard from him in a long time,” she said, choking back the tears. Dammit. 

Octavia shook her head. “Stupid idiot,” she muttered, and then pulled Clarke in for an enveloping hug. “Men are stupid idiots.”

“You won’t get an argument from me,” Clarke said, and just felt herself collapse in Octavia’s arms. She didn’t mean to, it was just like Octavia released something in her, and it poured out of her. She whispered a lullaby into Clarke’s ear and all Clarke could do was cry. And it was good. 

When Clarke was all cried out and felt in control of her emotions again, refreshed, grounded, she pulled back. “Thanks for being here,” she said.

“No problem. I’ll walk you home.”

“You don’t have to. No one is walking you home.”

Octavia grinned. “I’m a lot scarier than I look, Clarke. No one will mess with me.” Clarke thought that was probably right, so she let her.

***

Bellamy was sitting on the couch, watching a documentary and drinking a cold beer, trying to get his skin to stop buzzing, when Octavia stormed in the house.

“What the fuck O? I thought you were asleep.”

She went right up to him and pulled his sleeve up to point at the sigil on his arm. “What the fuck are you doing? Are you redrawing that every night? Why isn’t it gone yet? That is not control, Bellamy. That is avoidance.”

He yanked his arm out of her grasp. “Leave it alone. This thing between us is dangerous. She almost got taken by the magic. I had to stop it.”

“She. So you know she’s a girl. Do you know who she is?”

“I know she’s a woman. That’s all I know.”

“What the fuck have you been doing, Bell?”

“Who’s the guardian, here, O? Stop acting like you’re in charge.”

“Just the ‘stay?’ I don’t believe it. What else have you done.”

He turned over his arm and showed the smaller rune on his wrist. She ran her thumb over it.

“Deep sleep. No dreams. You took her dreams away, too. No dreams. No aetheric travel. You locked her up.”

“I needed to keep her safe.”

“Bellamy,” she said, and her voice was so full of disappointment. 

“Knock it off O. I needed to keep her safe.”

She shook her head at him and then pressed her lips together. “I need you to come pick me up after art club tomorrow.”

Her abrupt change of topic nearly gave him whiplash, but she was Octavia, so it wasn’t that unusual.

“I thought that princess was giving you rides home now.”

“Yeah, but I need a ride tomorrow. It’s your day off. Pick me up. You’re my guardian, it’s your duty.”

“Fine,” Bellamy said, just glad to be off the subject of runes and soul marks and on to something mundane. “What time?” She told him, and he went back to his documentary, ignoring the way she was glaring at him until she gave up and went to bed.


	6. You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke goes to school feeling off. What's the use of having magic if you're being kept from using it? He drew the runes that showed up on her skin, trapping her in her body and now everything is off. The world is heavy. 
> 
> It's one of those days. Art club ends early. Her car won't start and Octavia is being weird. Worse, her overbearing brother is coming to pick her up and Clarke will have to face his obnoxious ass. One of those days.

That day in art club, Clarke painted the stars. She painted the loneliness, and the turbulence in the energy. Indra came by and nodded. “I see you’re influenced by Van Gogh,” she said.

Clarke nodded. “Starry Night,” she said. But it was a lie. She was influenced by the energies she saw everywhere, but especially at night. She was influenced by the loneliness of last night, by her tears that she didn’t mean to cry, by her exhaustion this morning from too little sleep and too much moonshine. She was influenced by her utter and absolute stupidity.

She wondered if Vincent Van Gogh had been a witch. She snorted. Cut off his own ear and died in a mental institution. Was that what it meant to be a witch? She certainly felt out of control, no she felt under control. She felt weighed down by these stupid rune marks on her skin that she didn’t put there and didn’t want, but they kept getting darker every night.

She painted angry swirls on the canvas. Angry stars.

Niylah’s lips and fingers and weight pressing into her hadn’t made her feel better. At all. 

She wanted him. And he was drawing runes that kept her from flying free. Bastard.

“All right, kids,” Indra was saying. “Time’s up. I have important plans tonight. No stalling because you don’t want to go home. I’m not your mother. Clean up and get the hell out of here.”

Clarke appreciated that Indra didn’t treat them like children. She wanted to get the hell out of here anyway. Sure, she didn’t want to go home, but… ugh. She felt like she didn’t fit in her skin.

“Can I come to your house, Octavia?” she leaned over to the girl who was already packing up her paints. 

Octavia looked her up and down. “You sure you’re not scared of my house?”

Clarke snorted. “No.” Then she stopped. “Wait, is your brother going to be there?”

Octavia laughed, high and light like a bell. She snapped her fingers at Clarke. “Give me your hand.”

Clarke laughed back and held her hand out. Octavia took a ball point pen that had been sticking in her ponytail and wrote a word on Clarke’s palm.

“Hey!” Clarke said, yanking her hand back. “Why did you do that?” She looked at her hand. ‘IDIOT’ was written there in black ink. “Idiot? What did I do?” Clarke wondered if words written on her skin by someone else would show up on his. Would he see this? She glared at her palm for a minute. She hoped he DID see the words. He was an idiot and she was mad at him. She missed him like a part of herself and it was his fault. She decided to leave the epithet where it was. Idiot. She was as much an idiot as he was. Idiot. 

“My brother is picking me up from school today,” Octavia said, looking at her through her eyelashes.

“I thought I was dropping you off,” Clarke looked up at the girl, wondering all of a sudden how long she’s been staring at the word on her palm. 

“Not today,” Octavia said, but Clarke got the distinct impression that her words meant something else, that there were other words she was saying under the syllables. She shook her head. Looked at the girl, who was sitting there, swirling her dirty brushes in the water jar. 

“Fine,” she said. 

“But I’ll walk you out to your car.”

“Whatever,” Clarke said. There was no reason she should feel insulted that she wasn’t driving Octavia home today, but she pushed it down and cleaned up her paint. Indra stood over them the whole time, urging them to be quicker about it while not leaving the slightest trace that they had been there at all.

Clarke and Octavia walked through the halls out to the parking lot. Octavia pulled a bottle of root beer out of her bag and offered it to Clarke. “Root beer?” she said mysteriously.

“Why do you carry bottles of root beer in your bag?”

Octavia grinned at her, showing her teeth. “Sometimes I just need a jolt of energy,” she said.

Clarke drew her eyebrows down and looked at her friend. “Did anyone ever tell you you were weird?”

More of Octavia’s teeth showed. “Only everyone.”

They got to Clarke’s car in the parking lot. “You sure you don’t want a ride?”

“Nope, my brother is going to be here any minute now,” she said, staring intently at her with her green eyes fierce, swirling her bottle of root beer in her hand, so the brown mixture sloshed hypnotically in the glass.

“You and that root beer.”

“I make them myself,” Octavia said.

“What?”

“Yeah. The root beer. It’s a recipe my mom handed down from her mom. It’s actually made from roots. I brew it and bottle it. It’s special.”

“Oh,” Clarke said, reaching in her bag for her keys. “Like Monty and Jasper’s moonshine. I’m surprised you’re not doing something boozy.”

“Nope. This one’s it. It was my mom’s brew.”

Clarke nodded, feeling a tingle up her spine but not wanting to make it weird. “My mom has a cookie recipe that’s really great. I’ll make it someday and bring you some.” Clarke opened her car door.

Octavia just nodded and stared. Clarke was getting a little weirded out. “Okay, then,” she said and sat down. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Octavia nodded again, her green eyes bright as a sunny forest. Staring.

“Okay, weirdo.” Clarke turned on the ignition. 

Nothing. 

“What the fuck?”

She turned the key again.

Nothing. She tried again and again. 

“What’s a matter, Clarke? Car not working?”

Clarke looked up at Octavia and felt uneasy. Her green eyes were so bright. 

A roaring thunder filled the air. Octavia looked away and Clarke could suddenly breathe. What was that? The air was electrified. 

“Oh look, Bellamy’s here,” Octavia said. “What perfect timing.”

“What the fuck?” Clarke said. Nothing seemed perfect right now. Everything felt off. The stupid car not working, Octavia’s weird energy, and now the brother roaring into the parking lot in some old, dull black Mustang that was far, far too loud to make her comfortable. “This fucking sucks,” Clarke said

“Don’t worry about it, Clarke. My brother will call you a mechanic and he can drive you home, too.”

“Your brother hates me, Octavia.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“He calls me princess.” 

“Yeah, but he doesn’t hate you, trust me.”

Then he pulled up in front of Octavia and leaned out the window. “Let’s go, O.”

Clarke hated it that his deep voice sent shivers all the way to her toes. She had thought that last night with Niylah would have given her hormones at least the slightest break. 

“Nope. Clarke’s car broke down. You need to give her a ride.”

He leaned farther out and looked at her, now standing next to her white BMW. He grinned. “Princess mobile not working?” he mocked.

“Knock it off, Bell,” Octavia said, her eyes narrowed at him. “Call her a mechanic.”

“No,” Clarke said. “I’ve got triple A. I’ll call them.”

“Of course you do, Princess.” He glared.

Clarke wanted to snap at him, but she was too slow.

“Idiot!” Octavia said. He flinched. It must be her favorite word. 

“Let’s go, O.”

“I said you’re driving her home,” Octavia said and took a sip of her root beer. “I know you don’t have anywhere to be. It’s your day off.”

“I could have plans,” he said.

“But you don’t.”

They began bickering and Clarke turned away to call the mechanic. They said that someone would be there in 20 minutes. She settled down on the curb to wait. After a while, the Blake bicker fest calmed down and Bellamy went to wait in his car. Octavia sat down next Clarke. 

“You want that root beer now?”

“You’re so weird, carrying spare root beers around in your bag.”

“You have no idea,” she said, and held the bottle out. This time, Clarke took it, popped the top and took a drink. Sweet and earthy. It made her feel better. 

“You sure your brother’s okay with this?” she asked.

“No,” Octavia said, “but he will be. He’s not as much of a monster as he seems. He’s been going through some stuff.”

“Yeah, well,” Clarke said, taking a swig and enjoying the bubbling sugar on her tongue. “Haven’t we all.”

Octavia laughed. “Maybe it’s the same stuff.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Clarke and took a huge sip of her root beer.

Clarke snorted. “Doubt it.”

Octavia choked on her root beer and started coughing. Clarke was pounding her on the back when the tow truck drove into the school parking lot. 

It pulled up in front of them and the most beautiful girl Clarke had ever seen got out. Well, second most beautiful, she thought as she looked at her friend. Actually, it might have been a toss up. 

Clarke jumped to her feet, leaving Octavia sputtering on the curb. “Oh, thank god you’re here,” she said. “Can you fix my car?”

“Slow your roll, cupcake,” the beautiful mechanic said. “I have to look at it first. What happened?”

Clarke went over to the car with the mechanic and they tried to get the car started again. It didn’t work. That was when Clarke realized that Bellamy was right there with them.

“Oh!” the mechanic said and looked up at him. “Hi.”

“Raven,” he said, his voice flat and kind of uncomfortable to Clarke’s ears. She rolled her eyes. The man had no social skills whatsoever. It must be a family thing. At least Octavia’s lack of social skills were fun, instead of this anti-social angry bastard. 

“What’s going on here?” Octavia said, coming up to the car with the rest of them.

“Uh,” Bellamy said. “This is Raven, she came into my bar.”

Octavia looked her up and down. “You don’t look old enough to drink.”

“Uh,” Bellamy said again. Clarke almost laughed, she was so amused by his discomfiture. She stood back on her heels to watch Bellamy get taken down. By his sister, by the gorgeous mechanic Raven, she didn’t care. “Raven, this is my little sister, Octavia. And this is…” he gestured to Clarke.

Clarke repressed a laugh. She stepped up to Raven. “I’m Clarke.” She smiled and held out her hand to shake. “Nice to meet you Raven.” Raven smiled back at her. 

“Yes, well, let’s get back to business. The car ain’t starting. How about we check under the hood?”

Clarke walked around with Raven to the front of the car and popped the hood. Ignoring the Blakes, Bellamy standing there, arms crossed over his broad chest— damn why did he have to do that? And Octavia, standing on the other side of him, a small smile on her face, green eyes bright, swirling that maddening root beer bottle. It made her hair stand on end. 

Clarke turned her attention back to Raven who clearly was speaking in a different language entirely as she talked about engine parts and car-making-go-move. Who were these people?

Clarke blinked at her when she demanded some sort of answer. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Raven,” she said and threw her hands up into the air for emphasis.

Bellamy gasped loudly and stalked towards her.

Clarke found herself taking a step back as he came up to her, intimidatingly close and grabbed her hand.

The car chose that moment to sputter to life, roaring, the radio blaring a loud 90s song. The bottle of root beer in Octavia’s hand exploded for no reason whatsoever. 

Clarke jumped in shock, but Bellamy didn’t let go of her hand. He just pulled it over to glare at her palm.

IDIOT, her palm said, in Octavia’s bold pen strokes.

“It’s not a personal attack,” Clarke said nervously, “Your sister wrote it because she thinks I’m dumb, apparently.” Clarke tried to pull her hand back, trying to get away from him. She could barely catch her breath and her heart was suddenly racing. She glanced over at Octavia whose eyes were positively gleaming in glee. Raven’s eyebrows were drawn down tight in confusion, as she looked back and forth between the three of them. 

“Can I have my hand back?”

Bellamy didn’t even look at her or acknowledge that she had spoken. He just pulled her arm to him and shoved her sleeve up, exposing the dark black runes traced up her whole forearm.

“Do you mind?” Clarke said, feeling suddenly exposed, like a nerve, raw and painful. She refused to let those tears that wanted to come fill her eyes. REFUSED. 

“Oh,” Raven said. Clarke looked over at her, because she couldn’t look at this man who was holding onto her so tight. She couldn’t handle how warm his hand was or his imposing presence. Raven stood there, safer, her fists on her hips, watching them with a grin. “You thought I was her.”

Bellamy wouldn’t let her go. He was strong. She tried to pull away, but couldn’t. 

“But you didn’t know it was her until just now.”

Clarke heard a rushing in her ears. It drowned out all sound. She looked at Bellamy, but he was staring at her arm. She stopped trying to break free and instead reached out with her free hand to the arm holding hers, shoving his sweater up over his muscled forearms with the thick drawn, black lines. 

Her runes.

“You,” she breathed, looking up at him.

He finally looked at her, his lips parted in shock. She could drown in the depths of his eyes. She wanted to. The urge was incredible.

“Car’s working now,” Raven said. “This your doing, Octavia?” 

Clarke glanced over at Octavia, who was standing there, brushing glass bits off of her clothes. She grinned and shrugged.

“Huh,” Raven said. “Well isn’t this a very interesting situation.”

“Wh-what’s going on?” Clarke asked, the words barely getting out.

“Well, Clarke,” Raven said, the laughter just under her words. “It looks like you’ve just found your soul mate,” Clarke looked at Bellamy again, he was still staring at her face, her hand in his feeling less trapped and more embraced. This time she didn’t think she’d be able to look away if she tried. 

“And I’ve found myself a new coven in the three of you,” Raven said.

“You’re a witch?” Octavia said, but Clarke couldn’t spare a glance for her friend.

“As are you, Octavia. Neat trick with the soda. What kind of potion spell was that?”

“A little thing my mom taught me,” Octavia answered. 

“Nice,” Raven said, but Clarke was barely listening anymore. The revelation that Octavia and Raven were both witches paled in comparison to Bellamy’s warmth, his eyes, his glowing skin with the freckles and the black hair ruffling in the breeze. He was here. He was real. He was holding on to her as if he would never let him go.

“B-bellamy?” she asked, quietly, dimly aware that Raven and Octavia has stepped away and were deep in discussion.

“Clarke,” he said, his voice warm and deep, sending a jolt through her. She shivered.

“Can I have my hand back?” She meant it to be strong but it came out a whisper.

His breath seemed to leave him all at once and his eyes closed. He let her hand go. He shook his head as if clearing it of a spell. Witch, she thought. Maybe it was a spell. She was under it too. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.” His face looked pained.

“Bellamy?” she said, and it came out strong this time. She felt… connected. To everything. “Bellamy,” she repeated. She felt connected to him. Joy filled her.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She couldn’t help the smile that rose to her lips. He watched them curve up, and his own answered. 

She reached out to him with the hand that had the IDIOT drawn on it in ball point pen. She placed her hand over his heart, where she knew he’d drawn the rune, making her stay. She felt her own rune thrill in reaction, the connection between them like a strand of silver thread, suddenly vibrating into place like a strummed guitar string.

A feeling of relief filled her. She’d found him. A feeling of completion.

“I’ve found you,” he said, and she laughed with joy. So did he. His smile was so beautiful. It filled her heart to bursting.

His eyes became concerned. “Why are you crying?” he asked, his un-written hand coming up to touch her cheek and brush way tears with his fingers. 

She couldn’t stop the smile. “You,” she whispered, then she slid her hand up his chest, to his neck, her fingers tangling in his dark hair. She pulled him close. Down to her. Closer. Her lips barely touching his. “You,” she said.

She felt him nod, so his lips brushed hers. “You,” he agreed. Then kissed her.

The world faded.

She was home.


	7. Take It Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke tries to get Bellamy to remove the protective runes from her skin. 
> 
> He is not as cooperative as she would like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was hard to write. I don't know why.

“Take it off.” Clarke stormed into Octavia and Bellamy’s house the next morning.

Bellamy and Octavia were both on the couch, watching Avatar, eating bowls of cereal when Clarke blew through the house like a hurricane.

Bellamy put his bowl of cereal down on the coffee table and stood up to greet her.

He should probably have been terrified at the thrum of energy that went through his veins when she slammed open the door and shouted him down. But he didn’t care. He was just…relieved to see her. To be in the same room as her.

She gaped at him, her jaw slack. “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” she choked out.

He grinned and ran his hand through his hair. “Because I just got out of bed.”

He watched her eyes flutter closed as she swallowed heavily. Then she shook her head and let out an exasperated breath. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, then opened her eyes and stared right in his. “Take it off.”

His grin turned into a smirk and his hand went to his waistband.

“AAHH! NO!” Octavia shrieked from the couch. She rolled over the back of the couch and took off for her room. He’d never seen her run so fast. He laughed.

“You think that’s funny?” Clarke fumed.

“That’s what I was going for,” he said, still chuckling. “I was just teasing. I’m not… you’re too… it’s—“ his words fled. Fuck. He wasn’t going to do anything. She was too young. A friend of his sister’s. He had been teasing, he’d just felt so unburdened since meeting her and sending her home yesterday. He’d had plans to show up at her door as soon as he ate breakfast, but she beat him to it, and… well, where did the light feeling go?

She stepped close to him and heat zinged through him. “Take it off,” she said again and jabbed the rune on his chest with a pointy finger. He grabbed her hand and held it there, over his heart. The heat zinged again, more thoroughly, as if his heart had just started beating for the first time. 

“It’s to keep us safe, Clarke.” The words came out in a whisper. He hadn’t meant them to be so soft. He had meant to tell her, be sure.

She inhaled raggedly. Her eyes wide. “No.” She said.

“What do you mean, no?” He laughed with the last of his breath, a little bit lost in her eyes. They were so blue. He felt like he’d never seen eyes so blue before. He knew he must have, that they weren’t really bluer, but to him, they felt like blue had just developed a new shade, brighter, more vibrant, more alive. He stepped closer to her, feeling her body heat against his bare chest. It was hard to breathe.

“No!” she shoved at his chest and he was so enraptured in her presence that it knocked him off balance. He fell over the arm of the chair and landed, ungracefully in the recliner. 

“What the fuck!” he said. Shocked. The loss of her touch felt like he had been punched in the gut.

“Take those fucking runes off and let me out.”

“Clarke, you don’t understand…” he started. He shook his head. She had to know the magic was dangerous, it was a lure. A drug. He had almost lost her once already, he couldn’t deal with it again.

“No, YOU don’t understand. I’m trapped. There’s this world right outside of me and I can feel it. I can see it. It’s MY world and you locked me in. I’m like a prisoner.”

“Clarke,” he said and got his feet under him. “Look, we’ll figure this out. Work on control, but that time, it almost took you.”

“Bellamy,” she said, and her eyes were so mesmerizing, “You have to take it off. You don’t know what it’s like to feel it, to know it’s out there waiting for you, and being unable to go to it.”

“That’s the lure, Clarke, the magic calling you in deeper than you can handle, over your head. It wants you.” He found himself shaking his head. She couldn’t. She didn’t understand. “Magic is dangerous. It took my mother, she wasted away to nothing because she couldn’t resist the magic. She disappeared while she was still here. Please. You’ve got to understand this isn’t a game.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I can do with my body.” She held out her arms and shoved her sleeves up. “They got darker last night. Did you redraw them?”

He looked away. 

“You met me, and then you went home to trap me again.”

“No!” he said. “That’s not what I’m doing,” He turned back to her. “Listen. I just met you. I can’t lose you. Just wait, okay? You’re new to magic, you don’t understand yet. I can teach you, okay? And I will, but before you learn and with it pulling on you… it could take you before you got a chance to defend against it.”

“Octavia doesn’t have any runes written on her arms.”

“Octavia knows how to protect herself. She interacts with the magic differently. She has spells and potions and lights candles and gets into fights with people bigger than her.”

Clarke pulled back. “Are you making a joke of this?”

He sputtered. “I-I- no. Not really. She does that. It releases energy through her body. I can teach you how to do that,” he said and reached out for her arm, to take it in his hand. Touching her again set his whole body on fire. He could feel the tingle of the runes under his fingers.

Clarke’s lips fell open. Her eyes never left his face. “You feel that, don’t you?” Clarke asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

He nodded.

“There’s magic between us,” she said.

He nodded. He could feel it, like another being, made of energy, electricity, something between them, but separate. Something that was made of them, that made them one. It made him dizzy. He resisted the urge to pull her into him and devour her mouth with his. He had just met her. She was a high school kid. Barely older than Octavia. His hands tingled, and he fought the energy to keep it from rising.

“Raven said we were soul mates. That this was a thing that happened with witches sometimes. That it was special.”

“You are special.” He knew his voice was tight, taut with the effort of controlling himself in her presence, in the presence of their magic. It wanted to overwhelm him. 

Clarke peered up at him, her eyes narrowed. “It’s not me. It’s us. It’s a partnership.”

Bellamy swallowed heavily. He nodded.

“So you,” she said, “doing this” she nudged against his hands with her arms, “to me?” she raised her eyebrows at him. Her mesmerizing blue eyes snapped with electricity, “isn’t going to work for me.”

He felt a panic rise in him. He remembered how the magic took him, how it wanted him and he had no say. How he moved through the magic and it moved through him and he wasn’t in charge any more.

He remembered coming upon her, nearly unravelled from herself, the feel of her spirit disappearing in front of him. 

The pull of her, her magic, her soul, her body was nearly irresistible. He wanted her so badly, all of her. He was ready to grab her and throw her on his bed, fuck all of this responsibility, how young she was, the danger of the magic. He wanted to be inside of her in every way possible. 

“NO!” he shouted, pushing away from her. The tv sizzled and popped, smoke pouring out of the outlet.

They both jumped. “Fuck,” he said. Grabbing the plug and pulling it out of the wall. Her turned on her, holding the plug in the air. “Do you see? You see how this is not a joke?” 

She backed away from him. Her nostrils flaring, and her lips pressed together tightly. “I told you this isn’t going to work for me,” she said, and turned to go. 

“Shit, no, you can’t leave,” he said and reached for her wrist. “I’ll teach you!” The electricity between them sparked up his arm and he dropped it.

She eyed him. Her chest heaving. He knew she felt it too. It was so much more than he was used to, he was having trouble controlling it. If this was her first experience with magic, she must be terrified. But she didn’t look terrified. She looked angry.

“I don’t think you can teach me something you barely have a hold on yourself, Bellamy,” she said, her voice so low and husky that it set off another vibration within him, spreading a heat from his belly, filling his limbs with liquid energy. A different thing, something he was entirely unused to.

He went to reach out to her again, but she was already gone. Out the door and half way to her car.

“Shit,” he said and collapsed on the sofa, his head in his shaking hands.

***

Clarke left Bellamy’s house unsatisfied. She got into her car and slammed the door, the sound reverberating. When she started the engine, it came to life, roaring. The whole world seemed alive and angry. She pulled away from the Blake house, and the clouds roiled above her. It was only fitting.

She could feel the sky above her, and the motion of it, stirring the air, the clouds sweeping across the valley. It was like it all meant something, like it was guiding her somewhere and she just went with it.

Put a lock on her skin and trap her spirit. Fine. Her body was still free to go. Screw Bellamy Blake. (She hissed suddenly, at the knowledge that the same body was desperate to screw Bellamy Blake.) No. Screw him. He wasn’t going to take her over like that. Magic or no magic. He might have known he was a witch from birth, but she had these powers, too, wherever they’d come from, they were hers now and she was not going to give them away to him.

She turned a corner downtown and found herself at the garage.

“Of course.” She muttered to herself. A fierce wind blew as she parked and got out of the car, walking into the silent garage.

“Hello?” she asked, to the seemingly empty room.

She heard wheels roll, and then Raven’s head poked out of a door. “Oh!” she said, and stood up from the wheelie chair, some piece of machinery in her hands. “Clarke! What’s up, sister?” Her delicate fingers beat a tattoo on the pipe thingie she was holding. Her eyes pierced Clarke.

All of a sudden, she didn’t feel like being delicate or secretive. She shoved her sleeves up and held out her arms. “Can you get these things off of me?”

Raven rocked back on her heels, her eyebrows half way up her forehead. “Wow. Okay.” Raven glanced around the garage quickly, and then grabbed Clarke’s hand and pulled her through the door she’d just come through. She shoved the wheelie chair out of the way and closed and latched the door.

“Okay, yeah, so I’ve been talking to Octavia, and she gives me the impression that there’s some bad mojo in this town and you shouldn’t be talking about magic out loud like that.”

Clarke pressed her lips together and fixed Raven with a look. “I never said a word about magic, did I?”

Raven gave her the look right back. “Hmmph. Well. Let me see.” She snagged the wheelie chair with an ankle and pulled it under her, sitting to examine the runes. She ran her fingers up and down the heavy black marks and Clarke felt a spark, but it wasn’t anything like the spark she felt with Bellamy, where it filled her body and made her feel like she was flying. This was more like a sizzle. Raven’s touch ran over her skin and made her hair stand on end. 

Raven nodded. “Are the other three the same as these two?”

Clarke cocked her head. “How did you know there were three more?”

Raven took a breath to answer and then grimaced. “Sorry,” she said. “I saw the runes. On Bellamy.”

Clarke was surprised at how her heart seemed to stop. Her head filled with static. Bellamy had been with Raven. The dissonance made no sense. She knew he’d been with other people. She’d witnessed an episode from within his own head. But that one of his encounters was with Raven? She thought she couldn’t breathe.

“Hey,” Raven said. “Hey, sit down,” Raven was urging her to sit in the wheelie chair. “I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t— we didn’t fit. It was just the one time thing. I think he thought I was you. He thought I’d have these,” she pointed at the runes on Clarke’s arms, “and when I didn’t, it was, well, we were already… sorry. Now I feel like shit. My ex boyfriend cheated on me and it wrecked me. Now I come here and the first thing I do is sleep with your boyfriend.”

“He’s— he’s not my— he’s not—“ Clarke stuttered. “He’s not my boyfriend. I just met him.”

“Aw, babe. You are just unprepared for this, aren’t you? You don’t know anything.”

Clarke looked up at her and she knew she looked pitiful. “No. Help me. Teach me. Help me understand. How can it bother me so much that he slept with you. I was with someone not two nights ago, but this idea that he was with—“

“It was two nights ago with us, too. You know, that might not have been a coincidence. They say soul mates share the same spirit, their bodies are linked through it. They unify— no, what’s the word? Meld. They can feel what the other is feeling. If one of you was getting lucky, the other would have felt that.”

“Once—“ Clarke said, uncertain, “once we—shared— a night. But we weren’t together. It was…I was like, inside his skin. It was unbelievable. Like nothing I’d ever—but then he— I— he was scared and the next night, he gave me these.”

“What the hell is with you people here? You know nothing. He acts like being a witch is somehow life threatening and dangerous.”

Clarke blinked at her. “It is dangerous. My dad— my dad he found out something about the ley lines that run underneath this town, and he was killed for it. I think…” she looked around her as if someone might be watching. Raven pulled up a stool and sat down in front of her. “I think the town is magic, and my father’s family were once witches, but they hid it and lost it. There’s a book. I have it. It looks like some sort of inaccessible physics or something, but I think it’s about the magic. And I think he was killed for what he knew.”

“Killed… for knowing about magic?”

Clarke nodded, wide eyed. 

“So there’s someone who is trying to suppress the knowledge of these… what did you call them? Ley lines?”

Clarke nodded. 

“And the ley lines are magic?”

“I’ve seen them. I ride them. It’s like flying. But Bellamy thinks the magic will take me away. And then he put these marks on me.”

“Oh well, hell. You people are a mess. It’s a magic town but all the witches are hiding in secret or have lost their hereditary magic.”

“I have it, I think,” Clarke said, “I just don’t have any knowledge.”

“And no one has any covens at all? Like you all are just doing your magic in your closet with the lights off?”

“I— I don’t know. This is the first I’ve heard of it all. I was reading my father’s old book on the ley lines and I just took off into them, and then I met Bellamy… although I didn’t know he was Bellamy when I met him. He was just this… spirit… this soul… that was mine…”

“Hmmph, I’m kind of glad I don’t have a soulmate, now. Hell. I’d heard about them and always thought they were kind of romantic, this connection through magic, knowing that the other person was yours in a way nothing else could be, but this is like… you don’t have a choice.”

Clarke blinked at her. “I need to have a choice. Help me take these off.” She held out her arms.

Raven shook her head, taking her arms again and peering at the sigils. “I feel the magic.” She said as she ran her fingers over them. “He’s good. But I can’t take them off. Only he can do that from his side. I take it you asked him and he refused?”

Clarke grimaced and nodded.

“Men are so stupid.” Raven said. Her fingers tingled on Clarke’s arm. “I can’t take them off, but…” 

“But what?”

“Well, he used this odd form of ‘stay’. Very old fashioned. He probably learned it from his mother. And she learned it from hers. The new form is much easier and cleaner. But this one…. If I add a tail to it over here, and a cross hatch on this side,” she drew gestures over the runes with a finger, “well, I can turn the command ‘stay’ into the new form of a different command.”

“What command?”

Raven shrugged. “Come.”

Clarke raised an eyebrow. “The exact opposite?”

“Sure.” She held up a hand as if to ward Clarke away, then turned it around and beckoned. “Opposite side of the same coin, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. So, if the ‘stay’ command kept us both in our bodies so we couldn’t ride the ley lines or meet…”

“Aetheric travel. Oh, fun.”

“So what would the ‘come” command do? Bring us together?”

Raven made a suggestive face and grinned.

“You mean I would summon him?”

Raven nodded.

“He said I called him once, when he had made runes on my arm. They made me happy, but he said I called him and it scared him.”

“So he locked you up. Stupid men. Or maybe just stupid Bellamy. I need to get you all together so we can learn appropriate coven boundaries.”

“I won’t work with him until this command is removed from my body. Fix the rune.”

“Woah. Wait. If you just do that now, you’ll both have to, like, be together. Right now. Summoned. I mean, this looks like a pretty powerful sigil if he’s trapped you against your will, so I’m guessing the summoning would be as strong. Do you want to go traveling out of body right at this very minute? What if he’s driving or something? Or at work. They could think he was nodding out like a junkie and fire him, or send him to the hospital thinking he was having a fit and if it’s dangerous to be a witch here, then you really don’t want people looking into him as he is traveling out of body.”

“Okay, okay I get it. I don’t want to just force him to come. But he shouldn’t be forcing me to stay.”

“You’re right, and that’s why I’m going to show you yourself how to alter it. Give you a little lesson in runes and sigils. What do you think about that?”

Clarke grinned. “When do we start?”

***

Clarke was careful. She called Octavia to find out that Bellamy was actually at work until midnight. She waited in her room, until Octavia, who was horrified at her brother’s trapping runes, called to tell her he was home and up in his room reading.

She took out the rune chart that Raven had made her draw in a notebook. She sat on her bed and carefully matched it up to her runes, taking out the marker… water soluble, not sharpie, she wasn’t crazy… and made the additions to the sigils on her calves, her right arm, then her left arm. She unbuttoned her pajama top, and finished the adjustment to the rune over her heart.

She felt herself fall backwards into the pillows at the same time she felt the thrill of riding the ley lines, flying above the town, feeling alive again for the first time in forever. If she had a body she would be dancing, but as it was all she could do was revel as she felt herself one with all the energy around her. A part of this town. A part of the land. 

A part of him.

-No.

-Yes.

-You can’t be out here alone. It’s not safe.

-I’m not here alone. I’m with you. I called you. You didn’t think I was going to let you get away with that did you.

-It’s to keep you safe.

-Now you’re here, you can keep me safe. We can be safe together. Together for as long as you keep the sigil on my arm.

-What?

-Raven taught me. I summoned you to me. We’ll be together now and you can keep me safe as we fly. Come fly with me Bellamy

And when she said his name in this place she felt the love thrum through his soul because it thrummed through hers. He was hers and she was his and his name was even more than her own. She said it again.

-Bellamy.

She felt him glow. His energy swelled until he was almost a sun in his own right, filled with light. The ley lines around him turned in their energy paths and began to seek him out, connecting to him, feeding him.

-Clarke

She felt herself connect to everything to him. To her. To the lines.

And then there was a vibration. A rumble. Like a train coming. Far off in the distance, she felt more than saw a dull glow. Red where the ley lines were white and all colors. But this was dark, like an ember. Hot. A word came to her mind.

-Dragon.

-No

She felt the spike of fear in him and it took over her and she felt herself begin to spin out of control. Felt the thread of herself start to unravel.

-No! No.

***

And then there was a sharp pain raking down her neck and she woke in her own room, her neck burning and tender, long scratches etching along her tendons. She hadn’t done that, she was sure. It was him. Bellamy had raked his neck to bring him out of the summoning. How could he do that?

All Clarke could do was lay in bed, gasping, feeling incomplete, missing him like she had lost her limbs or her sight. She stayed like that for quite a while, thinking over the unsatisfying conclusion of her summoning before she finally remembered the dark thing that had ridden towards them on the ley lines. The red glow. Dragon.

It didn’t make any sense. There was no such things as dragons. Her heart beat faster.

A rattling came at her sash above her window seat. There was a shadow out there, trying to get in. She leapt of from her bed, grabbing at the baseball bat by the night stand.

The window opened and Bellamy crawled through from the tree outside. 

“Bellamy! What the fuck!” she said as the bat dropped limply in her hands.

“What the fuck is right, Clarke,” he said, and then he had crossed the room and taken her in his arms, crushing her lips to his, and she was so desperate to be with him, to be inside of him that she pulled him back until he fell on top of her on her bed. And he devoured her and she devoured him and it was right.

***

She did not know where his body ended and hers began. The night spun around them, the shadows stretched and embraced them. They were the light and his hands ran up her sides to her breasts and she dug hers into the muscles of his ass. She did not know when they had removed their clothes or when she first felt his tongue on her skin. She did not know if she was standing or laying down. She licked the red scratch down his neck and felt the wet heat on her own neck. His fingers stroked her and she threw her head back, feeling his desire for her. “Now,” she said. 

His voice rumbled in her ear, his hard body pressed up against her soft one and she wasn’t sure which was hers. “Now?” he echoed.

“Bellamy,” she said. He entered her and the world was Bellamy.

The feel of him inside of her, around her, of her inside of him and surrounding him was everything. They spread to the edges of the universe. The were the all and everything and when lights exploded behind her eyes and her body reached it’s climax, the feedback of his skin on hers and feeling her skin on his started the sparks again before they had even recovered from the first.

She could not get enough of his taste. She could not get enough of his rough voice in her ears and whispering to him how he made her feel, how she was made new by his touch. Again they made love, falling into each other and coming apart, putting each other back together with their soft touches, the warmth of arms and hands and lips, fingernails, tongues, the heavy weight, and the rising caress. Discovering each other’s bodies, the things that made them sing because they could feel it from the inside out. And again. And again. Her body was pure energy, tapped into the lines and filling up endlessly with this connection that was deeper than anything she had ever felt.

The sun was rising in the east when Bellamy gasped, “enough.” He grabbed her hand and dragged her from the bed into her bathroom with the pink curtains from when she was thirteen, and he turned on the shower.

He pulled her into the stall with him and grabbed the scrubber, filling it with soap.

Clarke was too busy licking the water off of his chest to pay much attention, but he pulled her off of him and handed her the scrubby. “Take it off, Clarke or we won’t be able to stop.”

She panted with all the sensations of her head and held up her arms to the shower. The additions to the sigil were already washing away. Smudging. The ink flowing off with the water. She shrugged. “I didn’t want to trap you,” she said, and shrugged.

His eyebrows drew together and she thought he might cry. He reached a hand up to her heart and wiped at his sigil. The water soluble ink there turned pink in the water and faded away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was scared.”

“I know. But you can’t treat me like some child. You have to let me choose.”

“But you’re so young, Clarke. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“You’re young too. And I know this is something new for you, not just me. We can learn it together.”

“I’ve never been young.”

“I haven’t either, Bellamy.”

Bellamy laughed. “You’ve lived up here on the hill, in this big house, with all the money and privilege. You haven’t had to deal with the things I have. I don’t WANT you to have to deal with that stuff. I want to keep you away from it all. To be free to—“

“No. That’s not free. That’s confined, bubble wrapped, isolated. This is my life, Bellamy. It’s my world. And I didn’t know it before, but I want to. You don’t understand what it’s been like. I haven’t been young either, ever. I’ve always been on the outside, looking in. Seeing things I shouldn’t see and knowing things I shouldn’t know and it made me strange. It was always just me and Wells and we would talk about the truth of things and how we couldn’t ever share with everyone the things we believed because they would know that we were different…”

She fell silent. The water pounding on her back as she faced him. She stared at him. He was beautiful, but since her marks had washed off she didn’t feel the urge to be back inside of him. She felt a bit sore, to be truthful. And tired. She wanted to lay down with him and sleep. A thought niggled at her mind.

“Who’s Wells?” he said, after a while, with just the water sounds filling the bathroom.

“He’s my best friend. Was. We used to do everything together.”

She felt a zing of electricity in her gut. Not hers. His. She blinked up at him. Took a step towards him. “You’re jealous.”

He started to shake his head no, but what was the point if she could feel his jealousy? He pulled her close to him under the water stream. “I don’t like it that you shared this with anyone else.” He huffed out a breath in exasperation. “I’m sorry. That’s stupid. You didn’t even know me. You had a life before me. Who you are is who you are. What we have is what we have. If you shared this with someone else, it’s not my business.”

She laughed. “Not this, never this. We were friends, but we never…wait.” She looked up at him. “Wells and I would talk about the things we saw and knew and heard. I thought it was just us being us, just weird, but we were always weird together so I didn’t think much of it, but as I got older, I knew that other people didn’t see things like we did. And now I know about… the magic… Bellamy.” Clarke felt light headed. She felt cold. 

“What is it? God, Clarke, you’ve gone white. What’s wrong?”

She clutched at his shoulders to keep from falling over. He was so steady and strong. “Bellamy, I think Wells is a witch too.”

“Your best friend?”

“He’s not my best friend anymore. He’s the one who told his father, the mayor about my dad’s plans about the ley lines. That’s what got my dad killed. Wells betrayed me. But… if he knew.. If he already thought I was a witch and was always convincing me to keep it secret, all these years, like we were in a secret club or something.”

For the last year, she had felt Wells’ eyes on her from across the campus. As she refused to speak to him, to accept his apologies for what he had done to her father, to her family, but still he watched her. She just ignored him, thinking it was his guilt for getting her father killed or resentment over her not forgiving him. She had never cared. Her anger at him always came first.

But now she wondered. He had always pulled her away from other people. Encouraged her to keep secrets, but it was always spoken in terms of a game, or how different they were from others, how no one really understood them anyway, and they wouldn’t want to be targets.

But they were targets. Her father was a target. And now that thing, that dragon had come looking for them. She felt a chill run down her back despite the heat of the shower and Bellamy’s strong body in front of her.

“What is it?” he asked, his arms wrapping around her as if he knew what she was feeling. She looked up at him, the anxiety on his face matching what she felt. Maybe he did know what she was feeling. This being inside of his body was a little unnerving.

“Are dragons real?”

Bellamy made a face. “No. Don’t be ridiculous. They are just fantasies, myths.”

“Then what was that coming towards us? You felt it, didn’t you? Isn’t that why you clawed yourself back into your body? The red energy.”

Bellamy clenched his jaw and looked off over her head. “That was the magic, Clarke. That’s what took my mother and emptied her out.”

“It was a dragon.”

Bellamy looked at her in confusion. 

“You didn’t see a dragon? Feel it?”

“Just the magic that sucked my mother dry.”

“Was it hunting us?”

“It’s not a person, Clarke. It’s like getting caught in an undertow. It’s a force of energy.”

“You told me it wanted you, and that’s why you couldn’t come to me. Was that it?”

“But…” she could see his thoughts churning. “It’s the energy,” he said, his voice less sure.

“Did it feel like it wanted you? To take you?”

He nodded. “Like it wanted us. Like it saw us. Like it WANTED us.” His fingers dug into her waist.

“Why have you lived your life in hiding, Bellamy? Why was my father killed?”

Bellamy stood there with her, his brown eyes dark and troubled, the water fell over their fevered skin. He held up the scrubber to her, offering it to her. He nodded. “Take them off.”

She looked at him in surprise. His face was so beautiful. She didn’t know his face yet, but she knew him. This intense focus on her, the freckles sprinkling his cheeks and nose, the scar above his lip. She rose a hand to the scar, ran her finger over it, wondering where he got it, all while feeling from the inside his trust. Feeling his need to reach out to her, to work on this, to figure it out with her. 

“Take off the sigils, Clarke. We’ll figure this out. We’ll learn together.”

She nodded to him, trying to suppress the smile that wanted to come to her lips. She leaned up and kissed his scar, because it was hers, even if she didn’t know where it came from. She put the scrubber to the mark over his chest and began to wash it. His fingers rose to her mark, caressing it as it faded under her ministrations on his own skin, shaking his head in wonder.


End file.
